Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 195, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1915 — HOW ALPINES FIGHT [ARTICLE]

HOW ALPINES FIGHT

Italy Reveals Unique New Arm to the World. Mountaineers of the Alps Perform Feats Which Nobody Believed Possible—Scale Summits and Take Enemy by Surprise. Rome.—The Italian war has revealed to the world a new arm, the "Alpines.’' , The Alpine troops are strictly an Italian institution and, with the Bersaglieri, form a picked corps. The defense of the Alps is intrusted to them. First of all an Alpine soldier is a son of the Alps. They are recruited there and they are organized into battalions. The mountaineer of the Alps never wastes a shot. His markmanship must be infallible or the famished wolves infesting the deep, wooded gorges will destroy his herd. When military conscription claimed him he knew every peak, road and track. Constant exposure to the severe winter cold or the heat of the summer had hardened his mus-

cles and made him insensible to fatigue. The training of the Alpine includes everything belonging to the infantry arm and more. He is taught how to regard a cave as his fortress and a rock as a redoubt. He is taught methodically and scientifically how to climb to an almost inaccessible peak or scale a sheer wall with the help of a rope and pick. Further, he learns how to dynamite a rock in the space of a few seconds and how to set tons of stones rolling down upon the enemy climbing after him. The training and fighting qualities of the Alpine were put to a severe test during the advance in the Trentino and Carnic frontiers, where the occupation pf the passes and the summits dominating them had to be made swiftly and effectively. The task devolved wholly on the Alpines and infantry.

On May 25, at two in the morning the reveille was sounded and the Alpines received the order to scale the summits facing them, chase the enemy away and prepare the ground for the infantry and artillery. Not in a sin* gle instance did the Alpines fall to reach their objective. The Austrians were surprised and either fled or surrendered after a brief resistance. At noon every battery of mountain artillery was in its place and shelling the Austrian forts. On the Carnic frontier, or more prein the Monte Nero sector, the task entrusted to the Alpines was harder and more complicated. Probably the exact history of the capture of the five peaks composing the Monte Nero range will never be written, but eye-witnesses maintain that this history will be a hymn of praise to the Italian Alpine troops. General Cadoma in describing the capture of Monte Poce, the fifth peak, said the Alpines performed feats which nobody believed possible. The Austrians themselves regarded this particular peak as absolutely impregnable. Towards Italy it was nothing but a sheer wall. The only way of approach lay through a deep gorge on the northern side of the mountain looking toward Plezzo. On the Italian side even a sentry was regarded as superfluous. The only way to take the fort was to scale the wall and reach the trenches undetected. The Alpines did it The rest is known. Two Austrian companies were surprised and dispatched in their sleep. Two mors shared the same fate. Later in tbs day the Austrians launched against the Italians a battalion of Hungarian Honved, in a desperate effort to r*« take the position, but the battalion was annihilated and the bodies ol the Hungarians are still at the IneUom of the gorge.