Captain Cavallotti’s small army continued their retreat until not a drop of gasoline remained in the tanks. Then, having abandoned the trucks, they continued on foot, stopping now and then to rest and get a little shuteye curled up right there on the ground. Their food supplies had run out; all that was left were a few bottles of grappa, but Floti had never been able to drink on an empty stomach and he would have sold his soul for a hot crescente fritter stuffed with a slice or two of prosciutto. He remembered how that transparent rim of fat on the coral-red slice would melt on contact with the steaming freshly-fried surface of the crescente, releasing all the sublime essence of the cured pork. Dreams and memories of the rustic banquets enjoyed with his family filled his thoughts. Food fit for a king on their modest country table, set out on a lavender-scented hemp tablecloth.
He’d completely lost contact with anyone who could give him news of his brothers. The information that did filter through from overheard conversations among their officers bode nothing but ill: tremendous losses, tens of thousands of prisoners and many more than that missing in action, which meant slain or captured anyway. Since he was still alive, Floti reasoned that it was increasingly probable that any or all of his brothers were dead, wounded or imprisoned.
Whose turn had come? Checco? Or Armando, who’d been skin and bones his whole life? Dante or Fredo, or Gaetano? Or all of them? He got goose bumps just thinking about how Clerice, and his father Callisto, would take it. There was no way they could survive the shock.
After travelling about thirty kilometers in a westerly direction, they came across another clearing center packed with soldiers and refugees. Dispatch riders sped around on their motorcycles and Red Cross nurses fluttered like white butterflies over a sea of gray-green uniforms. And yet the center reminded them of another life: there were automobiles in circulation, trucks loaded with bread and other provisions, and even a mail van.
Floti found a scrap of paper at the bottom of his haversack and a pencil that he sharpened with the blade of his bayonet and took advantage of the stop to write a letter to his parents. He informed them that there had been a great defeat, that the Germans and Austrians were still at their heels, and that he would be moving on with his unit to escape capture by the enemy. He also wrote that he’d had no news of the others and that since the telephone lines were out, like every other means of communication, he was not sure when he’d be in touch again, but not to worry, that he would try to manage somehow. He didn’t have an envelope, so he folded the piece of paper in three, sealed it with the stub of a candle and wrote his parents’ address on the back. He deposited it in a red mailbox with the Savoia coat of arms, hoping that it would reach its destination.
By the time they left the clearing center, the enemy were just a few hours behind them and were proceeding at a forced march. They proceeded towards Udine, but it soon became apparent that that city was lost as well. Floti realized immediately that they wouldn’t be stopping when he saw the trucks coming with food, tents and ammunition. No one knew where they were headed, when their unceasing flight would end. One of the soldiers in Floti’s battalion came from the mountains near home; his name was Sisto. Floti barely knew the fellow, because he wasn’t the type of person he normally sought out, but Sisto, on the contrary, was always trying to strike up a conversation. That day he had started out by saying that the war was lost and so why not just toss your rifle and go back home. Floti nearly came to blows with him. “You damn idiot!” he said, pulling him aside, “you want to face a firing squad? If they hear you, you’re dead.” Sisto turned white; he hadn’t had a clue of the risk he was running, and from then on, he never mentioned the topic again. It wasn’t long before he saw for himself what Floti meant by those words.
It happened when they were near Codroipo, shortly before reaching the Tagliamento. As they were moving along the provincial road, trucks in the center and foot soldiers on either side, the soldier from Naples shouted out: “Look, an airplane!”
“It’s ours!” shouted another.
“No, it’s Austrian!” shouted the captain. “Take cover, everyone!”
Some of the men dove into the ditch at the side of the road, others sought shelter behind the trucks.
“It’s on a reconnaissance mission,” said the captain. “They’re observing us, our conditions and our strength, to report back to their superiors.”
“Let’s shoot him down,” said the sergeant, raising his carbine and taking aim.
“No!” Cavallotti stopped him. “You mustn’t! If he dips down and you’re following him with the barrel of your gun, you risk hitting one of us. It’s happened before. Let him go, someone will show up to take care of him. Look, up there, that one’s one of ours.”
They all stopped in their tracks, noses in the air, to witness the air cavalry duel about to unfold. The Italian fighter plane homed directly in on the other frontally as if it meant to engage, then at the last minutes veered to the right and tried to put itself on the enemy’s tail. The soldiers on the ground cheered the pilot on but the captain reprimanded them: “That’s enough! Get back into line, we have no time to lose and they’ll handle this one on their own. Sergeant, give the orders to march!”
No sooner had he said these words than they heard more shouting. It came from a nearby farmhouse, which appeared to be abandoned. As they got closer, they saw two carabinieri with their gray three-cornered hats and carbines slung over their shoulders escorting a young man out of the building with his hands tied behind his back. He must have been a soldier, although he couldn’t have been any older than twenty. He was bawling at the top of his lungs. Cavallotti stopped with all his men behind him. The soldier was taken to the barn behind the house where a firing squad was standing in formation with their rifles at their sides.
Just then the crackle of machine gun fire could be heard and one of the two planes went into a spin and plunged to the ground, leaving a wake of smoke behind it.
“What’s going on, sergeant?” asked Floti.
“Can’t you see? They’re executing him. He’s a coward who shed his uniform and tried to escape.”
“They’re going to execute him? Just like that, without a trial?”
“It’s called a court martial, Bruni,” said Captain Cavallotti. “Ten minutes are all that’s needed to find a man guilty of desertion.” Floti, who already knew all this, nudged Sisto so he’d understand the lesson was for him.
The carabinieri tied the boy to a chair, facing the wall.
“He’s to be shot in the back,” observed the sergeant. “The punishment reserved for cowards and traitors. Maybe he’s both.”
The boy began weeping even louder as they blindfolded him. He cried out: “Mama, mama, help! Mamaaa!” calling for his mother like a little boy afraid of the dark.
The carabiniere officer ordered: “Platoon. About . . . face!”
The soldiers, who had been facing away from the barn, turned towards the prisoner.
“The squad never sees the condemned man,” commented the sergeant, “and he never sees them.”
Floti ignored him and turned to the captain. “But he’s just a kid who’s lost and terrified, they can’t just kill him like that. Isn’t there anything we can do, captain?”
Cavallotti did not answer, but it was clear that he’d had them stop for a reason. Funny how they weren’t in a hurry anymore, the enemy wasn’t right there at their heels. He wanted to give all of them a lesson. Show them what happens to someone who tries to get away.
The commanding officer drew his sword: “Platoon. Atten . . . tion!”
Floti lowered his eyes to the ground. The same voice rang out again, brusque: “Load!” That boy had only seconds left to live: he’d heard the metallic click of the rounds being pushed into the barrels. What was going through his head?
“Aim!” The rifle barrels converged towards the target.
He had stopped crying.
“Fire!”
He collapsed onto the chair. As the guns thundered, Floti felt his own heart stop for an instant.
He thought of Clerice waiting for him at home, fingering her rosary beads, awake at night in the dark, in her bed. He was sure that somewhere, someplace on the plains or in the mountains, the mother of that boy had heard his last silent plea, the words that never found their way out of teeth clenched in a spasm of terror. She must have collapsed as well wherever she was, out in the fields or in her house, her back sliding slowly down the wall as her eyes stared wide onto nothing.
Floti turned around and saw that Sisto had tears in his eyes. Cavallotti didn’t say a word. He glared at the sergeant to ensure he would stay silent as well as they resumed their march. Towards Codroipo. Towards the Tagliamento flowing gray and swollen between its banks. Entire divisions were heading towards the bridges, with their baggage trains and artillery pieces. The pounding of boots trudging wearily forward was the dull backdrop to that unending march. And yet that multitude of men, looking more like a herd than an army, carried their weapons and wore their uniforms and obeyed orders. The unrelenting discipline, paired perhaps with the conviction that there was no alternative to closing ranks, kept together the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in retreat.
The first to pass was the Third Army, under the command of the king’s cousin, the Duke of Aosta. They could be distinguished at a distance because they were formed in rank and file and were marching in step, unit after unit, their officers at their head and flanks. They had lost none of their equipment and as soon as they crossed the Tagliamento they took up battle positions in order to cover the others who still had to pass. But that was not to be the main line of resistance. The king had personally decided that the front was to be established on the Piave, and declared that he was prepared to abdicate if that line of defense were to fall.
Floti and his comrades passed Udine as well on the night of October 30th, and it was there that Captain Cavallotti was informed by a message from the High Command that the new line of resistance would be the Piave river, while Mount Grappa would be the stronghold from which the artillery would keep the Austrians at bay if they attempted to break through.
Towards evening, when they had already set up camp, Floti saw a colonel arriving in the sidecar of a Frera. He had the captain summoned immediately and Floti was close enough to hear their conversation.
“How many men do you have, Cavallotti?”
“Six hundred and fifteen, sir.”
“Arms?”
“Light arms and seven machine guns with ammunition.”
“Good. This is the position your men will have to secure between the Priula Bridge and Mount Montello: this is a crucial point because Mount Montello will be one of the main objectives of the Austrian army. You’ll have to hold them off, at any cost. The English and French commanders have arrived and are promising reinforcements.”
“About time,” replied Cavallotti.
“Yes, right, but don’t be expecting too much: they have their own nuts to crack. Cadorna has ordered the Fourth Army to fall back from the whole region of Cadore beyond the Piave, so they can join up with the rest of our defensive front. Di Robilant won’t be very happy but he’ll have to comply. There’s desperate need of his artillery to hold Mount Grappa.”
Cavallotti nodded. “When?”
“Tomorrow at five you’ll have to set off. Don’t stop until you’ve reached your position. As soon as you arrive, dig in. Expect the Austrians to attack immediately. They won’t give you a moment’s respite.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I also wanted to tell you that we’ll be calling two more years to arms: 1898 and 1899.”
“’99? But they’re children!”
“You have a son born in ’99? Well, so do I, but we have no choice, Cavallotti. Good luck.”
Floti felt his heart sink. 1899! Savino would be getting his summons from one day to the next. His parents would be alone, with just Maria and the farmhand. All seven brothers, whoever was still alive, would be lined up on the Piave.
But where?
He thought of those men with their fancy sounding names—at least they sounded fancy to his ears—deciding the destiny of hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings just by signing a line on a sheet of letter paper, those manicured fingers moving a pen over paper and moving entire divisions. It reminded him of the talks he used to have with Pelloni.
The next morning they started their march and didn’t stop until they saw the Piave. It was much bigger than the Samoggia back home; it was in flood and its waters were raging and foaming. It must have rained a lot up in the mountains.
“Men, look!” exclaimed the captain. “The river is on our side! We’ll blow up the bridges after we’ve crossed them and the Austrians will never get across with the water so high.”
Floti couldn’t help but think that the Austrians and the Hungarians hadn’t done anything wrong. They were shooting at them because they had been ordered to, just like him, and if someone didn’t want to shoot they’d execute him, just like that poor boy they’d seen before arriving at Codroipo. He thought of what the captain had always told them, and it did seem right that each population should be independent and not ruled by foreigners who spoke a different language. But in the end, the only thing that really counted was saving your life and he hoped that his brothers would be spared as well. Not just for their sake, but for their parents, who would never be able to bear such a terrible loss.
Before mid-November, the rumor got out that General Cadorna had been dismissed and that the king had put a Neapolitan general named Armando Diaz in his place. Floti waited until he had the opportunity to ask Captain Cavallotti what kind of man this new general was, struck by the fact that his name was Armando like his own brother’s.
“He’s a good person,” replied Cavallotti. “He has had a lot of experience on the field, and he’s a man who thinks that soldiers are not animals, and that it doesn’t help to beat them down. That their courage will not falter if they are given good reasons for fighting.”
Floti would have liked to say that he didn’t know any good reasons, but he thought it better to keep his mouth shut under the circumstances. Cavallotti, however, seemed to have read his mind. “I know what you’re thinking, Bruni,” he said, “and you’re right, in part, but you don’t know what’s really at stake here; you have to take a step back, and understand how the Italians have suffered for centuries over the loss of their liberty and independence. A nation is something like a family, you have to stick together. And when a stranger comes into one of our houses he has to ask permission, doesn’t he, and behave like a guest, not like the boss. What’s more, the fruit of our labor must remain here at home. And those of us who are better off must help those who are worse off.”
Floti nodded without saying a word and Cavallotti concluded his speech: “I know we’ve seen too many deaths, far too many. I don’t sleep at night over it, don’t think otherwise. But I never send my men into danger’s way if I can help it.”
“That’s a good thing, sir,” said Floti, plucking up his courage, “because it’s not like their mothers bought them at the market. Their mothers conceived them and gave birth to them and stayed awake with them at night when they were ill and fed them the best they had, so they could grow up and live as long as possible. Let’s hope this new general thinks the way you do.”
Cavallotti dropped his head in silence for a moment, then went outside to check the cannon stations. Before nightfall he promoted Floti to corporal.
For at least their first two months there, they had no contact with other contingents and Floti could get no news about his brothers. From one day to the next, new soldiers were constantly being added to the line of troops along the Piave to comply with the king’s orders that no enemy be let through. As soon as the new year started, the latest recruits began to report for duty, boys of eighteen and nineteen. Floti continuously scanned the units to see if he could spot Savino, but it would have been easier to win the lottery. That didn’t dissuade him and, whenever he could, he’d stop one of the new boys and ask: “Have you ever met a lad called Savino Bruni?” And it didn’t discourage him if they looked at him like he was crazy or if they replied with a shrug or with a “what the fuck?”
Once Floti saw that even the impossible can happen. An Alpino of about forty-five wearing a sergeant’s stripes, at the head of his company, was returning from the trenches, covered with mud from head to foot except for the black raven feather on his cap. Under the rain that had begun to fall from a gray sky, his boots were beating time as all his men marched behind him, formed into rank and file. Dead tired as they were, soaked to the bone, some of them wounded, they kept the pace like a single man. All at once, as they were crossing paths with their replacement unit—all bocia, as the Alpine soldiers called the youngest troops—one of the foot soldiers cried out: “Bepi! Bepi!” Half a dozen of them wheeled around as if they’d been ordered to perform a half turn to the left, but he was interested in just one, the one with the light blue eyes and the freckles. Bepi too abandoned the ranks, heedless of the cursing of his sergeant and the two of them embraced in the middle of the field. Both units stopped and the non-commissioned officers who commanded them did not have the heart to separate father from son.
As time passed, the pressure continued to mount: the cannonades were continuous and the Austrians were forever attempting to cross the river; in the end, they succeeded, managing to establish two bridgeheads on the right bank of the Piave.
One day, Captain Cavallotti, who had struggled to set up a tent which provided some semblance of an administrative office, gave his men orders to pack up everything and send all the documents over to the engineers’ headquarters.
“We have to take up our rifles, Bruni,” he told Floti, “all of us, down to the last man, because if we don’t push them back this time, it’s over. Venice will fall, and all the rest with it. Do you know how much sacrifice it took to create Italy? We’ve been fighting for almost one hundred years. We have to finish the job once and for all, and then we’ll be done with it. I know what you’re thinking: ‘France or Spain, who gives a damn, as long as there’s food on our plates,’ but only a nobody reasons that way. Only animals and slaves have masters: are you an animal, Bruni? No, you’re not. Are you a slave? No.” He was answering all of his own questions. “Now we can finally afford to be free men, all of us, cost what it may.”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I do have a master back at home. He’s a notary named Barzini. We work his land, he does nothing and takes more than half of everything.”
“We’ll take care of that, too, Bruni, but now let’s worry about this army that’s invading our country. I’ve armed even the members of the band, Bruni: guns instead of trombones and clarinets.”
That was true. Floti had seen the guys from the band in the trenches, and they weren’t half bad as shots.
From the two bridgeheads, the Austrians were battering Mount Montello and Mount Grappa incessantly, and from his post Floti could see hell being unleashed over the dominion of those two peaks. Cannons rumbled in the distance and columns of smoke rose with fire inside. The volcanoes in the south of Italy must be something like this, he thought. Everyone was expecting the Italian front to collapse all at once, like at Caporetto, and then that would be the end of everything.
Instead, that’s not the way it went.
Assault after assault, the Austrians were pushed back. Could the fear of a firing squad alone be a sufficient explanation for all of this, Floti wondered. Why didn’t all those proletarians rebel and start shooting at the carabinieri instead of at their comrades of the Austro-Hungarian proletariat, as Pelloni would have suggested. Apparently this whole thing was not very easily explained, but Floti had come up with his own idea while fighting at the front: he’d seen that the Neapolitan general who was commanding now and whose name was the same as his brother’s didn’t send his men to the slaughter, his soldiers; he asked them to hold fast but not to get themselves massacred by charging the machine guns bare-chested. The food was better, the shoes were sturdier, the grappa and the cigarettes were better quality. It didn’t take much, all told, to stop them from feeling like cannon fodder: a little respect and a bit of consideration. And then there was the river, so big and so beautiful, that had to be defended at all costs, and before you knew it you ended up believing in it and doing your part.
One evening Floti crawled over to a derelict building near the riverbank to see if he could see for himself any traces of this offensive everyone was talking about. But it had become too dark and he couldn’t make out much at all. Then he heard a light lapping of waves along the shore, and saw dark shapes intent on sliding small boats into the water; one man to a boat, they stretched out inside and used their arms as oars. There were a number of them: two, three, five, all dressed in black. Maybe half a dozen in all. They were crossing the river to the opposite side, where Franz Joseph’s empire began. Well, not his any longer, the old man was dead, so his son’s empire. They were using the current to their advantage, cutting across on the diagonal until they touched land.
All at once, as he was getting ready to turn back, he felt a boot crushing down on his back and something hard like a gun barrel pressing into the nape of his neck.
“What are you doing out here, handsome? Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Listen,” replied Floti. “I’m from the thirty-eighth. I just wanted to take a look because I heard there was going to be a big offensive.”
The man with the boot, a big burly fellow, black as ink, flipped Floti over with his foot and planted the rifle in the middle of his chest instead. “You wouldn’t be a spy, would you? Figuring how to make it across? If I wasn’t afraid of making noise, I’d shoot you here and now just to be on the safe side.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t swim and all I know how to say in German is kartoffen.”
“It’s kartoffeln, you cunt.”
“Right, okay, but let me up, will you? I have to get back to my unit. My commander is Captain Cavallotti, I’m Corporal Raffaele Bruni and I’m no cunt.”
“Then get the hell out of here. Let’s say you were lucky this time. If I catch up with you again I’ll put you to bed with a shovel. Got that?”
“You bet,” replied Floti. He got up, dusted himself off and headed back to the camp.
He told the captain what he had seen as he was bringing him a cup of coffee the next day.
“Those were Arditi. Special assault units,” the officer explained. “They more or less swim across the river and when they get to the other bank, they take out the sentries with their daggers, lay mines and blasting gelatin, sow terror and mayhem, and then cross back over. You saw the Caimans of the Piave, Bruni, not everyone can say that,” he concluded.
Time passed. Days and months. Whole seasons. The trenches filled with muck up to your knees became dusty instead as spring turned into summer, but Floti still had no news of his brothers. He received a letter from his parents once, three months after they’d asked the parish priest to write it, saying that they hadn’t heard from anyone and that his father Callisto could find no peace, could think of nothing but where his sons were, whether they were alive or dead. Floti wrote back, but got no answer. Who could guess at the destiny of a single sheet of paper in this hellish situation.
One day at the beginning of June, Captain Cavallotti told him that something was in the air, another offensive, most probably, starting very soon. The Austrians already had five bridgeheads on the right bank of the Piave and were trying to consolidate them. The rumor was that they wanted to push all the way through to the Po.
In the following hours, one courier followed another and soon the whole camp was seething with activity. A great number of airplanes began to cross the sky—it was astonishing to see so many all at once—and armored vessels could be seen on the river. The groundwork for land, water and air battles was swiftly being laid. They had never seen anything like it.
Then the attack began in earnest, on June the 15th: the Austrians, from their bridgeheads, opened their big guns to prepare the way for their infantrymen who were meant to storm Mount Grappa and Mount Montello, the Italian strongholds which stood in the way of their advance and still had the firepower to hammer thirty kilometers of territory all around.
In a short time the din from the mouths of twenty thousand cannons made the air quiver all along the flow of the Piave, and two hours after the start of the offensive Floti’s unit was sent to the attack, with rifles first and then with their bayonets. Once, twice, three times on the same day. And again the next day. They returned at night with barely enough energy to force down some cold rations. Three days later, Floti could not believe he was still alive. It was a miracle he was still steady on his feet, because he hardly ever slept. He would nap when he could, leaning on a tree or propped behind a wall, when there was a lull in combat. The Austrians had crossed at a number of points, by laying footbridges on the shores of the river, and they launched wave after wave of powerful, head-on attacks in an attempt to break through, but the front continued to hold fast.
That evening there was an assembly of the regiment and the colonel told them that their mates on Mount Grappa and Mount Montello had fought like lions, driving back the enemy and putting them to rout. As long as the mountain strongholds held, the whole line of the front could count on being protected from behind. The enemy had suffered tremendous losses, because the air force had done its part by machine gunning the fleeing soldiers from the air. The French and English allies had made an important contribution on the high plateau of the Seven Communities, and had seen for themselves how bravely the Italian soldiers were fighting.
“We can do this, boys!” shouted the colonel finally. “We can do it! All of Italy is talking about you. Your families will learn of your valor and they will be proud of what you’ve done here.”
The troops responded this time with shouts of enthusiasm, and Floti was surprised to find himself yelling with the others. “There’s no accounting for what’s in your heart,” he thought to himself as the officers gave the order to fall out.
The Austrian offensive continued incessantly until the 20th of June and then little by little began to wane. By the 24th, the enemy army started to retreat. The Italian aviation and artillery gave them no respite and then even the infantry set off in pursuit of the Austrian troops as they attempted to flee over the footbridges they themselves had built to cross the Piave. It was a massacre.
Corporal Raffaele Bruni played his part, leading the company into the attack. He strove forward, his strength unbelievably holding out until, suddenly, he felt a burning pain on the left side of his chest and fell to his knees. His vision fogged over into a red cloud and the roar of the battle ended, all at once.