Battle of Col di Lana Mountain and the Battle in the Adige

Italian Army, 500,000
General Caclorna
General Pecori-Giraldi
Duke of Aosta

Austrian Army, 600,000
Archduke Charles of Austria
Field Marshal von Hoetzendorff
General DankI
General Koevess
General Boroevic von Bojna
General von Rohr

Deeming herself finally delivered from the Russian peril, Austria was free to bestow her full attention on the Italian front early in 1916. An army of not less than 600,000 picked troops was assembled on the Alpine frontier with 2,000 huge cannon, ready to batter its way through the Italian defenses. The task of crushing Italy was assigned to Archduke Charles Joseph Ferdinand of Austria, assisted by Field Marshal von Hoetzendorff.

The Austrians hoped to forestall the expected Italian assault on Gorizia, then being planned, by an attack on Trentino. Concentrating their artillery fire on the front between the Adige and Brenta, they hoped to push through to the Venetian Plain, capture Verona and Vicenza, and then, by threatening the Italian flank, compel a general retreat of all the Italian forces operating along the line of the Isonzo River. From late February until the middle of March, there was a succession of floods and snowfalls, with their resultant avalanches and landslides, rendering military operations difficult. So sudden and resistless were these avalanches that they swept away whole regiments of men and great sources of supplies. The Austrians assisted nature in this destructive work by producing artificial avalanches on the steep mountain slopes by means of mines, bombs and artillery fire.

The Austrian Advance Begins

About the middle of March, the Austrians began to develop their offensive. With 2,000 guns available, the artillery fire intensified along the entire front. The Austrians advanced west of the St. Maria Mountain in the Tolmino sector, taking many prisoners. In the Doberdo and Ploecken sectors, and along the Gonby bridgehead, the Austrian guns thundered incessantly for a week from March 26, ...