Part 13
It was not until, after ten miles of precarious climbing and clawing up the ice-paved, snow-walled road, our car brought up in the midst of a neat little group of Alpine buildings nestling in the protection of the last of the timber, that Capt. P---- revealed the surprise that had been prepared for me.
“Our host here,” he said, “will be Colonel X----, who conceived and directed the Castelletto project, and at dinner to-night you will meet, and can talk as long as you like, with Lieutenant Malvezzi, who did the work. He is still quartered here, and will be glad to tell you all that he can about Alpine military engineering. We have already sent him word that you came to Italy expressly to see him.”
After a hasty lunch Capt. P---- and I, accompanied by an officer of Alpini from the camp, started for the Castelletto. Our powerful military car, which, in spite of the fact that it had non-skid tyres, had been giving a good deal of trouble on the ice, was left behind, and a smaller but heavily-engined machine, with sharp spikes clamped over the rims to grip the glassy surface of the road, was taken for the few miles of the latter which were still open. Abandoning this in a snow-bank at a little advanced camp well up under the towering wall of the Tofana, we took our alpenstocks and started on the 2,000-foot climb up to the base of the Castelletto.
The hard-packed snow on the thirty to forty degree slope must have averaged from ten to twenty feet deep all the way, while, for a half-mile or so midway, it was humped up in crumpled fold where, a fortnight before, one of the largest and most terrible slides ever known in the Alps had plunged down on its sinister mission to the bottom of the valley. The full story of that avalanche will hardly be told until after the war.
Slightly softened by the brilliant sun, the snow gave good footing; but even so it was a stiff pull to the little ice and rock-begirt barracks at the base of the cliff, and I gained some idea of the titanic labour involved in getting guns, munitions, machinery, food, and thirty-five tons of high explosive up there, all by hand, in every sort of weather, and much of it (to avoid enemy observation and fire) at night.
Midwinter was not, of course, the time to see anything of the real effects of the great explosion, for the huge crater torn by the latter was drifted full of snow, and snow was also responsible for the complete obliteration of the countless thousands of tons of _débris_ that had been precipitated down the mountain side. A dizzy climb up the ladder-like stairway, and a crawling clamber through a hundred yards of the winding tunnel from the rock chambers which had housed the compressors, revealed about all that was visible at the time of the preparations and consequences of the mighty work; but a peep from the observation port of a certain cunningly concealed gun-cavern discovered a panorama which gave illuminative point to the concluding words of the artillery officer who, pointing with the shod handle of an ice-pick, explained the situation to me from that vantage.
“So you see,” he had said, “that the Castelletto in the enemy’s hands was a stone wall which effectually barred our further progress; while in our hands it becomes a lever which--whenever we really need to take them--will pry open for us positions of vital importance. We simply _had_ to have it; and so we took it in the one way it could be taken.
* * * * *
“Save for his Alpini uniform Lieutenant Malvezzi, when I met him at dinner that evening, might well have passed for the typical musician of drama or romance. His skin and hair and eyes were dark, and his long nervous fingers flitted over the paper on which he sketched various phases of the Castelletto work very much as those of a pianist flit above his ivory keys. The dreamy, far-away look in his eyes was also suggestive of the musician, but that I had long come to recognise as equally characteristic of all great engineers, the men whose tangible achievements are only the fruition of days and nights of dreaming.
“Where shall I begin the story?” he had asked as the diners in the regimental mess began to resolve into little knots of threes and fours over coffee and cigars; and I had suggested that he take it up where his report left off. “That stopped just as things began to happen,” I said. “Now tell what _did_ happen.”
The Tenente laughed a laugh suggestive of rueful reminiscence, and a smile ran round among those of the officers who had heard and understood my words. “So far as I am concerned,” he replied, “that covers about five minutes of activity--five minutes for which we had been preparing for six months. You understand that we had constructed a branch tunnel through which our men were to rush and occupy the crater as soon after the explosion as possible.
“_Ecco._ The men were all massed ready on and under the terrace, and nothing remained but the making of the connection firing the mine. I took one long look around and then threw over the electric switch closing the circuit. Every one seemed to be holding his breath as he waited. One, two, three seconds passed in a silence so intense that I heard the sharp ‘ping’ of the water dripping from the roof of the chamber and striking the pool it had formed below.
“Then, before any other sound was audible, the whole mountain gave a quick convulsive jerk, strong enough to throw some of the men off their feet. A heavy grinding rumble in the earth came with a shivering that followed the jerk, but the real roar of the explosion (from the outside) was not audible for a second or two later. Only those watching from a distance of several kilometres saw the right-hand pinnacle of the Castelletto give a sudden heave, and then sink out of sight in a cloud of dust and smoke.
“In addition to the honour of firing the mine that of leading my men into the crater had also been reserved for me, and as soon as I heard the roar of the explosion I gave the order for them to follow me up into the tunnel. Well----” he paused and ran his laughing eyes around the grinning circle of his fellow officers, “that is about as far as my evidence is good for anything. As I went clambering up the slippery steps of the tunnel an almost solid wall of choking fumes struck me in the face, and I--and all of my men except those near or outside of the portal--dropped coughing in my tracks.”
“Had the mine blown back through the tamping?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he replied, his rueful smile becoming almost sheepish, as of one who had allowed himself to become the victim of a prank. “The Austrians had a big store of asphyxiating bombs on hand to use against us, and these, exploded by our mine, vented their spite on friend and foe alike. We were not able to occupy the crater for twenty-four hours.
“I am glad to say that I spent what would otherwise have been an intolerably anxious interval unconscious in the hospital. By the time I had been revived a friendly breeze had thinned the gas sufficiently to allow our Alpini to move into the crater and reap--in spite of the delay--every advantage we had at any time counted upon from the operation. Our most cherished capture was the ‘perforator’--practically intact--with which the Austrians were driving an almost completed counter-mine directly under us.”
“The nervous tension must have been rather strong toward the end, wasn’t it?” I asked; “especially when you knew the enemy had at last got your work definitely located and was rushing his counter-mine?”
The smile of whimsical ruefulness died out of the dark sensitive face, leaving behind it lines I had not noticed before--lines that only come on young faces after weeks or months of incessant anxiety. The backward cast shadows of a time of terrible memory were lurking behind his eyes as he replied:
“For seven days and nights before the mine was sprung neither I nor the officers working with me slept or even rested from work.”
That was all he said; but I saw the eyes--brimming with ready sympathy--of his fellow officers turn to where he sat, and knew the time for light questionings was past. Not until that moment did a full appreciation of the travail involved in the blowing up of the Castelletto sink home to me, and I nodded fervent assent to the words of the English-educated Captain of Alpini next me when he observed that “Malvezzi’s little ‘Order of Savoie’ was jolly well earned, eh?”
WONDERS OF THE TELEFERICA
“Jolly good work, I call that, for a ‘basket on a string,’” was the way a visiting British officer characterised an exploit of the Italians in the course of which--in lieu of any other way of doing it--they had shot the end of a cable from a gun across a flooded river and thus made it possible to rig up a _teleferica_ for rushing over some badly-needed reinforcements.
The name is not a high-sounding one, but I do not know of any other which so well describes the wonderful contrivance which played so important a part in enabling the Italians to hold successfully their three hundred miles and more of high Alpine front during the first two years they were in the war. And in this connection it should be borne well in mind that the Austrians never were able to break through upon the Alpine front, where--until the _débâcle_ upon the Upper Isonzo--the Italians, peak by peak, valley by valley, were slowly but surely pushing the enemy backward all along the line. Nor should it be forgotten that up to the very last the Alpini had their traditional foe mastered along all that hundred and fifty miles of sky-line positions--from the Carnic Alps, through the Dolomites to the Trentino--which ultimately had to be abandoned only because their rear was threatened by the Austro-German advance along the Friulian plain from the Isonzo. The loss of this line under these conditions, therefore, detracts no whit from the magnificent military skill and heroism by which they were won and held.
The Italians’ conduct of their Alpine campaign must remain a supreme classic of mountain warfare--something which has never been approached in the past and may never be equalled in the future. According to the most approved pre-war strategy, the proper way to defend mountain lines was by implanting guns on the heights commanding the main passes and thus rendering it impossible for an enemy to traverse them. The fact that these commanding positions were in turn dominated by still higher ones, and these latter by others, until the loftiest summits of the Alps were reached, was responsible for the struggle for the “sky-line” positions which the Austro-Italian war quickly resolved itself into.
This kind of war would have been a sheer impossibility two decades ago, from the simple fact that no practicable means of transport existed capable of carrying men, munitions, guns and food up to continuous lines of positions from ten thousand to thirteen thousand feet above sea-level. The one thing that made the feat possible was the development of the aerial tramway, or the _teleferica_, as the Italians call it, which gave transport facilities to points where the foot of man had scarcely trod before. Regular communication with the highest mountain-top positions would have been absolutely out of the question without this ingenious device.
As I have said, the “basket-on-a-string” description fits the _teleferica_ exactly, for the principle is precisely similar to that of the contrivance by which packages are shunted around in the large stores and factories. The only points which differentiate it in the least from the overhead ore-tramways is the fact that--in its latest and highest development--it is lighter and more dependable. For the ore-tramway--always built in a more or less protected position--had only the steady grind of the day’s work to withstand; the _teleferica_ has not only the daily wear and tear racking it to pieces, but is also in more or less perennial peril of destruction by flood, wind, and avalanches, to say nothing of the fire of the enemy’s artillery or of bombs from his aeroplanes. That the Italians have evolved a contrivance more or less proof against the ravages of these destructive agents is, perhaps, the best evidence of their genius for military engineering. Nothing more perfect in its way than the _teleferica_ has been produced by any of the belligerents.
Theoretically, a _teleferica_ can be of any length, though I think the longest on the Italian front is one of three or four miles, which makes a good part of the eight-thousand-foot climb up to the summit of the Pasubio, in the Trentino, and which--at the time of writing--is still in Italian hands. The cable may run on a level--as when it spans some great gorge between two mountain peaks--or it may be strung up to any incline not too great to make precarious the grip of the grooved overhead wheels of the basket. I was not able to learn what this limit is, but I have never seen a cable run at an angle of over forty-five degrees. Wherever a cable does not form a single great span it has to be supported at varying intervals by running over steel towers to prevent its sagging too near the earth.
A _teleferica_ has never more than its two terminal stations. If the topography of a mountain is such that a continuous cable cannot be run the whole distance that it is desired to bridge by _teleferica_, two--or even three or four--separate installations are built. This is well illustrated in the ascent of the Adamello, the highest position on the Austro-Italian front. One goes to the lower station of the first _teleferica_ by motor, if the road is not blocked by slides. At the upper station of this two-mile-long cableway a tramcar pulled by a mule is taken for the journey over three or four miles of practically level narrow-gauge railway. Leaving this, a hundred-yard walk brings one to another _teleferica_, in the basket of which he is carried to its upper station, on the brow of a great cliff towering a sheer three thousand feet above the valley below. Three hundred yards farther up another _teleferica_ begins, which lands him by the side of the frozen lake at Rifugio Garibaldi. Three more _telefericas_--with breaks between each--and a dog-sled journey figure in the remainder of the climb to the glacier and summit of the Adamello.
The engine of a _teleferica_--its power varies according to the weight and capacity of its basket and the height and length of the lift--is always installed at the upper station. The usual provision is for two baskets, one coming up while the other goes down. As with the ore-tramways, however, an installation can be made--if sufficient power is available--to carry two or three or even a greater number of baskets. As this puts a great strain on the cableway the Italians have only resorted to it at a few points where the pressure on the transport is very heavy.
The two greatest enemies of the _teleferica_ are the avalanche and the wind--the latter because it may blow the baskets off the cable, and the former because it may carry the whole thing away. As the tracks of snow-slides--the points at which they are most likely to occur--are fairly well defined, it is usually possible to make a wide span across the danger-zone with the cable and thus minimise the chance of disaster on this score. It is only when the dread _valanga_--as occasionally happens--is launched at some unexpected point that damage may be done to an aerial tramway. A great slide--perhaps the worst which has occurred on the Italian side of the lines during the war--which came down, a mile wide, from the summit of the Tofana _massif_ to the Dolomite road in the valley five miles below, carried away a block of barracks and a battery of mountain guns, in addition to burying a considerable length of _teleferica_ a hundred feet deep in snow and _débris_. Visiting this slide in December, 1916, a few days after it happened, I saw--at a point where a cut had been run in an endeavour to save some of the several hundred Alpini who had been buried--the twisted tower of the _teleferica_, inextricably mixed up with the body of a mule and a gun-carriage and overlaid with a solid stratum of forest trees, two miles below the point at which it had formerly stood.
Though the number of disasters of this kind from avalanches may be counted upon one’s fingers, trouble from high wind is always an imminent possibility. In the early days of the _teleferica_ accidents traceable to the blowing off of the baskets were fairly common; in fact, it was feared for a time that the difficulty from this source might be so great as materially to limit the usefulness of the cableway system. The use of more deeply-grooved wheels, however, did away with this trouble almost entirely, so that now the only menace from the wind is when it comes from “abeam” and blows hard enough to swing the baskets into collision when passing each other in mid-air.
Though I have had many a _teleferica_ journey that was distinctly thrilling--what ride through the air on a swaying wire, with a torrent or an avalanche below, and perhaps shells hurtling through the clouds above, would not be thrilling? --I have never figured in anything approaching an accident, and only once in an experience which might even be described as “ticklish.” This latter occurred through my insistence on making an ascent in a _teleferica_ on a day when there was too much wind to allow it to operate in safety. It was on the Adamello in the course of an ascent which I endeavoured to make toward the end of last July.
There was a sinister turban of black clouds wrapped around the summit of the great peak, and before we were half-way up what had only been a cold rain in the lower valley was turning into driving sleet and snow. We ascended by the first _teleferica_--a double one--without difficulty, but the ominous swaying of the cables warned us that the next line, which was more exposed, might be quite another matter. This latter is the one I have mentioned as running from an Alpine meadow to the brow of a cliff towering three thousand feet above it. It was one of the longest--if not the longest--unsupported cable-spans on the whole Alpine front. It was also the steepest of which I had had any experience. The fact that it was exposed throughout its whole length to a strong wind which blew down from an upper valley was responsible for putting it “out of business” during bad weather and thus made it the weak link in the attenuated chain of the Adamello’s communications.
As we had feared, we found this _teleferica_ “closed down” upon our arrival at the lower station, ample reason for which appeared in the fifteen or twenty-foot sway given to the parallel lines of cable by the powerful “side-on” wind gusts which assailed it every few moments from the direction of the glacier. Fortunately, as the storm was only coming in fitful squalls as yet and had not settled down to a steady blow, the _tenente_ in charge thought that it might be possible to send us up in one of the quieter intervals.
“There’s no danger of the baskets blowing off the cable,” he said; “it’s only a matter of preventing them striking one another in passing, of which there is always risk when the wires are swaying too much.”
As there were three of us and the carrying capacity of the basket was limited to two hundred kilos, it was necessary to attempt two trips. As the heaviest of the party, it was decided that I should ride alone, starting after the two others had gone up. Taking advantage of a brief quiet spell, my companions were started off. There was still a good deal of sway to the cables, but a look-out above kept the engineer advised as to conditions as the baskets approached each other, and the passage was made without incident. When my turn came to start, however, the storm had settled down to a steady gale, and the _tenente_ said he did not dare take the responsibility of trying to send me through. Ordinarily I should have been only too ready to acquiesce in his ruling, but as my companions had just ’phoned word that they were going on by the next _teleferica_--a comparatively-protected one--to the Rifugio Garibaldi, where they would await me before starting on the following stage of the ascent, I realised at once that my failure to appear would throw out the whole itinerary and make the trip (which had to be finished that day or not at all) a complete failure. It was plainly up to me to get through if there was any way of doing it, and I accordingly suggested to the young officer that I would gladly sign a written statement taking the whole responsibility for an accident on my own shoulders.
“That would not help either you or me very much if things happened to go wrong,” he said, with a laugh. “If you really must go, you must; that is all, and we shall simply do our best not to have any trouble. I shall send one of the linemen along with you to fend off the other basket in case it swings into yours in passing. There is a returned American here who ought to be able to do the job and talk to you in your native tongue at the same time.”
And so it was arranged. I took my place--lying on my back in the bottom of the basket--as usual, after which Antonio--grinning delightedly at the prospect of keeping watch and ward over a “fellow-countryman”--climbed in and knelt between my feet, facing up the line. Then the “starter” banged three times on the cable to let the engineer at the top know that all was ready, and presently we were off along the singing wire.
The ordinary motion of a _teleferica_ is not unlike that of an aeroplane--though it is not quite so smooth and vastly slower. On this occasion, however, the swaying of the cable furnished a new sensation which, while mildly suggestive of the sideslip of an aeroplane on a steep “bank,” was rather more like the “yawing” of a “sausage” observation balloon in a heavy wind. The swinging of the basket itself was also a good deal more violent than I had ever experienced before, though at no time great enough to make it difficult to keep one’s place. Both motions were, of course, at their worst out toward the middle of the span, so that one had an opportunity to get used to them gradually in the quarter of an hour which elapsed before that point was reached.
I took the occasion to ask Antonio a question I had been making a point of putting to every _teleferica_ man I had a chance to talk with. “Is it really true,” I said, “that no one has been killed since the war began while riding in a _teleferica_?”
“A large number of men have been injured,” he replied; “but no one has been killed outright,” and he went on to tell of a friend of his who had coasted down a thousand feet because the pulling-cable jerked loose from the place where it was attached to the basket when the latter had fouled a “down” basket in passing. He was badly injured from the jolt he received when the basket brought up short at the bottom, and it had taken three months in the hospital to put him right again. He would never walk again without a stick, but he was so far from being killed that he was the engineer of the very _teleferica_ on which we were riding. He was a very careful man, said Antonio, for he fully understood the consequences of letting two loaded baskets bump in mid-air.