The reader will not find in this book either a novel or a history. These are my personal recollections, put in order as best as I could, and limited to one year of the four years of war in which I took part. I haven’t recounted anything except what I saw and what struck me most. I have not relied on my imagination but on my memory; and my comrades-in-arms, sometimes by way of some slightly changed names, will easily recognize both men and events. I have also stripped myself of my subsequent experience and have evoked the war as we actually lived it, with the thoughts and feelings we had at the time. This is not, therefore, a work with a thesis: It is intended merely as the account of an Italian witness to the Great War. In Italy, unlike France, Germany, and England, there are no books about the war. And this one, too, would never have been written but for a period of imposed rest.

Clavadel–Davos, April 1937