Afternoon all,

I might be going on an extended visit to northern Italy in the next few months and I thought I might take the opportunity to visit some of the Italian front. Unfortunately I know virtually nothing about it! There don't seem to be a vast number of books on the subject, but I'd be interested to know whether anyone here has any recommendations.

I know there are a couple of battlefield guide- type books - has anyone ever used them?

Swizz

Hi Swizz,

This question has been tabled before, so the Search button should yield results; however, I found the Wilks overview dry to the point of dead boring. There is a good Battleground Europe - Asiago volume by Francis Mackay. For a personal memoir, try Graham Greenwell's 'Infant in Arms'.

PS, try here http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...83&hl=Wilks

Hi Kate,
Thanks for the pointer - there's some good info on that thread! Its so difficult starting into a new subject when I know literally nothing about it. Makes me realise how Western front orientated I have been up to this point... I had seen the Battleground Europe one on Amazon and I might go for that as a starting point.

Swizz

Blowing my own, euh, never mind: (includes booklist as well)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~aur/Battlefields/italytravel.htm

http://www.xs4all.nl/~aur/Battlefields/italytravel2.htm

http://www.xs4all.nl/~aur/Battlefields/italytravel3.htm

Regards,

Marco

Not a travelogue, but you might find my Italy pages interesting: http://www.1914-1918.net/italy.htm

There are now two volumes by MacKay - both very useful. The Wilks is useful but dry and there is another volume on Caporetto - whose details escape me. The British Official History is more than useful and has been reprinted - the originals are "rather expensive". Tourist Info in Asiago certainly used to produce an excellent map showing trench lines and some of the old forts high above the valleys can be visited and have been part restored. The corridor between Asiago and Venice also conatins some of the"rear" areas and there are cemeteries etc to be visited there. A couple bookshops in Asiago seem to stock an interesting range of books and the like on the Italian front and also cover the "enemy side" as well. I have a particularly interesting and well illustrated volume on gas shells (note to self - must learn Italian one day - book might be even more interesting ......

One of these, Martin

Falls, Cyril 'Caporetto' Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1966.
Morselli, M Caporetto 1917: Victory or Defeat? London Frank Cass 2001 (ISBN: 0714650730).
Seth, Ronald Caporetto, The Scapegoat Battle; London McDonald 1965
Smith N "Caporetto : 12th Battle of Isonzo".
Wilks, J & Wilks, E Rommel and Caporetto October, 1917 Barnsley 2001 (ISBN: 0850527724)

Thanks everyone for this information - the forum comes up trumps again!

Marco's travel pages look very useful (with great photos), as does the material on this site which I had skimmed through already but will give more time to when I get a chance.

So many books! (including one written by someone from my part of the world - Cyril Falls strikes again!). I'm pretty sure I will buy the battlefield guides but I think a library visit is called for to suss out what else might be useful. When I'm out there I hope to learn some Italian although whether I will ever have enough to read anything published in that language is doubtful...!

Again, many thanks to all for your reponses
Swizz

Swiz,

Another personal account, probably out of print, is "Across the Piave" by Norman Gladden. Gladden was a private in 11th Northumberland Fusiliers.

Phil

The best global history of the Italian Front available in English is "Isonzo: the forgotten sacrifice of the Great War" by John R. Schindler, Praeger Publishers, 2001. A must read for the Anglo reader, and a fresh, almost provocative, look on the causes of the Austrian defeat.

Thanks Phil and Antonio - I've added these to my list. now all I have to do is find time to read them!
Swizz

Hi, Swizz;

Rats! I just wrote a long information-packed response, and it flew off into a cyber-space black hole when I was thrown off by a phone call.

Basically, I was singing the praises of Slovenija for such a trip. The road north from Nova Gorica (just east of Goriza) passes thru Kobarid. I probably drove thru eight times before I realized that it was Caparetto. There is a new quite good WW I museum there of course focused on the local fighting in WW I. If you continue north along the road, which follows the Soca River upstream quite closely, the road gets more and more spectacular, and then dramatically rises to Versic Pass (from memory), about 6000 feet, sort of lunar, above the tree-line. Then you can go down the amazing, steep, switch-backing road (safe, if you are not a fool), which I think was built by Russian POWs for the Austrians. Close to the bottom on the west side of the road is a wooden Orthodox church built as a memorial to about 300 Russian POWs who were swept away by an avalanche. (My Slovene mountain guide's father was a Russian POW who had the sense to not go back after the war.)

There is at least one other WW I museum there, in an old fort from the era, I think; I have not seen it myself. The people at the Kobarid Museum could direct you, or a Slovene national tourist office.

The town at the bottom is Kranska Gora, which, being a ski town, will have a lot of accomodations at off-season prices. But I prefer to stay in private accomodations. Slovenija is beautiful; friendly people who speak a lot of English and German, and should be cheaper than Italy. I think that most of the battlefields are on the Slovene side of the border.

I have been to Slovenija about 18 times, lived there, worked, studied there, as well as playing tourist. I would be happy to give you more info if you wish. I could also give you leads if you would like to hike about or do some climbing. I could even put you in touch with my guide, who was the top Jugoslav climber for about 20 years. We used to climb in Switzerland every year; my guide in Slovenija was a friend's sister.

Bob Lembke

Hi Bob,
Thanks so much for your reply - I only just noticed it on this thread!

I have looked more closely at a map of the area and I think (assuming that our car insurance covers it) we might try and get across into Slovenia. I had not realised that Caparetto wasn't even in Italy! My husband very much likes the sound of the switch-backing road too!

Unfortunately we still don't know if we're even going to Italy (its with my husband's job) so I've put my preparations on ice for the time being...

Swizz

Isonzo is a terrific very badly mapped book. The switch back road is great. A terrific read about how the Italian soldier endured appaling officers and conditions is Sardinian Brigade by Emilio Lussu.

Hello Paul
I have been away for the past week so have only just returned to the forum. Many thanks for your recommendation of 'Sardinian Brigade' - I have literally never heard of that book and so probably wouldn't have known about it if you hadn't pointed it out! It sounds excellent and I'm in the process of getting hold of a copy at the minute.
Swizz

I don't know how good it has been translated to english, but anyway "The Sardinian Brigade" is a must-read in my opinion, the original title :"Un anno sull'altipiano" means one year on the high plateau, the one of Asiago namely.
Sadly I'm not aware of any translation of Carlo Salsa's "Trincee": his personal account of the nightmare life on the mount S. Michele during the terrible and useless eleven Isonzo-battles. There are german language publications of the '70ies "Der Krieg im Fels und Eis" if memory serves me, which are excellent in rendering the hard life and fight of both Austrians and Italian, whith many pictures and maps... They are left in my parent's home so it's been a very long time since I last looked at them. Aother personal point of wiew is given by Paolo Caccia Dominioni's diary. He is more famous for his later books about his african experiences as assault engineer officer (Takfir and El-Alamein) and his later activity in recovering and burying the corpses of the fallen of El alamein, but in his very youth he volunteered in the Italian Army in the engineers corps, fisrst as "Bridge-thrower" (is it correct?) and then in a flametrower unit on the Isonzo front.

Regards

Luigi;

My principal interest is flame throwers; in particular the German flame effort, but also the flame troops of all other combatants. I have very little on the Italians. Does Dominioni say a good deal about his service with these weapons? Can you give a title? (Although, with such a complete and not common name, I probably can find the book.) Has it been translated into English? I can read Italian fairly well in a pinch, although I have never studied it, and have spoken it very little.

From my father's oral history I first thought that he was sent to Caparetto with his flame company for the Nov. 1917 battle. He never said that he was, but he told me a couple of stories that seemed to have come from someone who actually was there. But when I translated his Militaer=Pass I saw that at the time of the battle he was in hospital in France, as an old wound from Verdun had become re-infected. (It was a problem for over 10 years.) So he probably heard the stories from comrades who had gone. I have seen a good photo of German flame troops there, but I have never seen anything that indicated that they carried out flame attacks in that battle. Their flame attacks were very carefully planned, and when the attack went forward quickly there probably was not a good opportunity and a static target to attack.

Have you seen other mentions of Italian or German flame attacks on the Italian front?

Bob Lembke

I got less lazy and got on the Internet and looked in a few large book sources and libraries. I could not get onto the Library of Congress on-line catalog as their circuits were overloaded, but the New York Public Library has about eight or ten of his books; one on WW II was translated into English. The diary was published in 1965 in Milan, and is 373 pages, so it must have some detail. I gather that his full name (I hope) is Paolo Caccia Dominioni de Sillavengo, and he seems to sometimes be cataloged under the last last name; remember this if you are looking for the book. The title is very long, but has the word "Lieutenant" and "diary" in Italian, of course, in the title, which seems 25 words long.

I will have my super-librarian wife look for where the book is at other locations.

Bob Lembke

Hunted about, and found about 15 copies of Dominioni's El Alamain book, and two copies (expensive) of the WW I diary, for sale. All are on mainland Europe, not the US or UK. However, lots of copies of a cookbook by an author with the same last name.

Bob Lembke

My wife found about 20 copies of Dominioni's WW I diary scattered about the USA in various libraries. Her library at the University of Pennsylvania does not have it, but she found and ordered a copy from the library at Princeton.

Bob Lembke

It strikes me that threads like this one on the lesser considered battlefronts (ie NOT the Western Front) often turn up a useful "bibliography". I wonder if pals might like to consider building bibliographies for these "lesser" dcoumented battlefronts as an aid to those enquiring upon these areas.

Any Thoughts?

I had in mind:

Mesopotamia
Salonika
Egypt & Palestine
Gallipoli
Italy
East & South West Africa

Happy to start off with some half-baked ideas on this useful suggestion.

Perhaps an "editor" can volunteer or be dragooned for each "secondary theatre". (Probably not secondary to anyone who fought or died there.) I think that a useful entry would not only have the usual author, title, date of publication, # of pages, etc., but notes on the usefulness and weaknesses of the source (not only from the person, but perhaps from others familiar with the work), some notes on availability and/or price, if useful, etc. Perhaps in total an average papagraph's worth.

What might be more useful, by not being hundreds of posts long where the jems are lost among the cow patties, and to keep such an effort from eating up gobs of storage for the overall forum, if possible, the following proceedure might work. One person would propose a source, giving his information, others might comment or add other useful info, and at some point the editor might consider the combined info "ripe" and put the source entry into some sort of finished space, maintained either as a post on the threat, or a document on his word processor. If the latter, periodically the "document", in other words the theatre bibliography to date, would be posted to the thread (I am assuming a thread for each theatre bibliography, managed by the editor.) When the entry for the given source seems "ripe", the various posts that led to the finished (?) source entry could be deleted by the editor, a Moderator, or some other Pal with semi-divine characteristics. Periodically, the entire bibliography could be posted on the bibliography's thread.

Also, since the simple word processor utilized by the Forum, and/or the other simple one utilized in the cut/Word Pad/paste process in at least my operating system, which destroys subtle formatting, italics, etc., there might be some mechanism for Pals to obtain a copy of the word processor master copy of the bibliography, if one is being maintained. I have often posted a copy of some document I have on my computer, sometimes one sort of focused bibliography that I have built up, only to have 90% of the spacing, formatting, underlining, etc. that I used for clarity be destroyed in the version that pops up in the post. I do not know if that is feasible in a fashion that does not put an undue burden on the editor.

Bob Lembke

Guys;

I have Dominioni's diary, and am plowing thru and translating what is of interest to me. Aside from the fact that I have never studied Italian, and only once skimmed a book in Italian, a rare and curious one I found in the National Library in Vienna in Italian, the diary seems to be written in dialect, or perhaps in a non-literary sort of language. Also, my dictionary, although of the period, and seemingly a good one (published by Oxford), may be part of the problem.

My point is that Italian seems to be rather easy to read, if you have any background in a Romance language, such as French, except one should expect to consult a dictionary a lot for the unfamiliar vocabilary.

I have a nice, heavily illustrated Slovene guide to the Isonzo Front, as it exists now. I bought it in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenija, in German; it is titled Die Isonzofront and is by a Slovene lady, Petra Svoljsak (there is an accent on the last "s" that I had to omit). I mention it as, aside from the original Slovene (a fairly difficult language), I think it was also published in English, as I think that I saw it on abebooks.com . I guess that these are still in print, and you probably can find it being sold widely in Slovenija.

Bob Lembke

Sorry to have let you wait that long... yes is Paolo Caccia Dominoni di Sillavengo. You might find some hurdes in translating his book as it is written in a somewhat "researched" style, although pleasant to read for a native italian... no dialect I remeber of, apart maybe some citations of what some soldier might have said.

Go to the second part of the book if you want to read about the flamethrowers, the first part deals with his experience as pontooneer.

He speaks about heavy and light flamethrowers in fixed installations, if memory servesme there is a detailed map of the disposition in his front sector, but I don't reember much details about their use.

Sad "Trincee" hasn't been translated, this is a very good book, written in a very "modern" way of speaking.

The Sardinian Brigade served as basis for a good movie of Francesco Rosi, "Uomini Contro" (1970) also known in the USA as "Many Wars Ago". Another very good movie is "La Grande Guerra" (The Great War by Mario Monicelli, 1959).

I seem to recall that Dominioni's books about the second world war were translated, but I'm not sure.

Regards

Luigi;

Is his name structured in the Spanish fashion; i.e., "Dominoni" was his father's name, "Sillavengo" his mother's family name? To catalog the book, should I use Dominoni" as his "real" name?

My first dictionary was terrible; someone took a larger dictionary and arbitrarily cut out words, explainations, etc. to shorten it (to say 800 pages); still it was published for at least 30 years and by Oxford. Got a better one now. My wife has fairly good Italian. But it is coming along well, much faster than when I taught myself to read and then write German.

Yes, I have only started on the flame thrower (FW) material, but the Italians seemed to mostly use the
FW in fixed positions, almost like MGs emplaced in the trenches. Also the FW troops seemed to stay in the trenches for some time. The Germans usually came to the assault place, attacked, and pulled out to barracks, using their own trucks to move. The German high command had a written order that FW were not to be used as a defensive weapon, except for exceptional circumstances; FW were a great attack weapon, used properly; usually a really bad defensive weapon.

Yes, at least one of his WW II books has been translated into English. It is common, this book is quite rare. I have to send it back soon, so I will photo-copy it.

I think that this book will be very useful to me. The Italian flame warfare effort was rather large; but from what I have read so far, they were not using them in the most effective fashion, in my opinion. As far as that goes, the British really were the leader in using the FW incorrectly, and finally dropped their use in warfare entirely, while continuing to demonstrate them to distinguished visitors to France, like the Royal Family. When the Royal Navy decided to use the weapon in their attack on Zeebrugge, they had to "reinvent the wheel", so to speak, and manufacture rather crude devices.

Bob Lembke

No, it means Dominoni FROM, or OF, Sillavengo, they were a noble family, Count of Sillavengo.



Indeed it seems from the reading of Dominoni's book. Actually my grandfather was a seargeant in WWI and was trained as assault-Flamethrower-specialist... too bad he passed away beginning of the 80ies when I was too young and still not much interested in technicalities. I remember him saing that a light flamethrower squad was of three men, the carrier of the weapon, a soldier for cover and a "machanician" with a blanket (woollen if IIRC) to "extinguish" the carrier in case of self ignition or the device being hit and such... they trained for long time and he often complained by letter to a friend of him (the brother of my later Grandma) that they couldn't wait to see the front line. The friend, a savvy young man, told him to stay quiet and not be too eager to see the trenches... The friend of my grandfather was a young and valiant leutenent, I read the letter he sent home, what they had to endure is incredible and it is increible to see such maturedness in such young people, but he wasn't crazy: he died on the Col Bricon in fall 1916 from the splinters of a bomb.

Regards

Luigi;

Very, very interesting. Pardon me if I sound preachy (like Il Papo), but I think that you have a responsibility to preserve this very interesting and I think rare oral history of the Italian flame thrower (FW) effort in WW I. My focus in my research is on the German FW effort in WW I, but I also study the efforts of other countries, and I had thought that it would be hard to find out much about the Italian effort, but now we have both Dominoni's book and the oral history and perhaps even some letters from your family.

Allow me (I always love talking about myself or my family) to recount how I handled my family's oral history. My father told me many stories about the WW I period, family and military stories, probably mostly in the 1950's, when I was a young teenager( ca. 12-16 years old). I can hardly remember being told the stories, but they were very vivid in my mind. Then I found a collection of about 50 letters of the era, mostly letters of my father's and grandfather's from the front. It seems that my father went about after the war and collected letters from the people that he sent letters to during the war, even people not in the family, and put them in a folder and marked in big letters on the folder what the contents was.

I was very interested, but before I did anything with the letters, or started studying the war from books, etc., I carefully wrote down what I remembered from the stories and went over it to get the stories down on paper as accurately as I could, before the letters or any other source could "color" the stories. I have, in about six years, not changed one word of the 40 pages of single-spaced notes that I had put down. At first I was suspicious of the stories, especially as my father helped keep alive several "hoaxes", or stories that were deliberately incorrect and humorous and designed to make the person who believed them look like a fool. One of these hoaxes was kept alive for about 50 years.

However, as I study WW I, read family letters and documents, and build a library of reference materials (for example, I have about 15-20 Ranglisten and about 110 German official histories of the war from the Reichsarchiv), I have found that one after another story was true. Recently a British expert who lives in Germany and has remarkable resources, like collections of decades (tens of years) of German military newspapers from the 19th Century (e.g., 1885), the actual papers, has found solid evidence that some stories that sounded impossible or at least impossible to verify were true; for example, finding mentions of my grand-father in several military newspapers from about 1886 when he was still a sergeant! Some stories are impossible to verify, but now I can accept them with some confidence, although if I ever use them in a book I will clearly mention the nature of the source.

Additionally, we have a good family photo album that went back to the 1890's, with some military content, and at least three times I went through it (seperately) with my father, my mother, and a relative of my mother's, all now dead, and used a tape recorder to record their recollections of what the scenes were, who the people were, etc. Also, shortly before my father died, I tried to get him to tell some of the stories into a tape recorder, but he had a bit of trouble breathing, and unfortunately did not feel good enough to do it (no, he was not actually on his death bed, I am not that big a meat-head), as he had smoked 60 years, and his breathing was impared a bit, even after stopping a couple of years before.

Your potential material is, IMHO, quite important, and I hope that you can get it down on paper, and see if you can secure copies of any family letters on this era.

Even your brief explaination of the structure of the Italian flame team is very instructive. The Germans did no particular steps to protect the flame troops, things like, blankets, flame masks, protective clothing, although some ignorant people actually drew pictures of German troops equipped in that way. But the Germans, who started their design efforts in 1901, done by professional engineers, had many safety features built into the devices and inherent in the types of fuel that they used. Cases of German flame throwers exploding, even when hit by enemy fire, were very rare. The single most important safety feature was the use of inert nitrogen as the propellant, while the Allies often used compressed air and even, insanely, compressed oxygen, which could and did lead to the devices blowing up, possibly even achieving ignition within the device, probably within the hose, before the fuel emitted from the nozzle to be ignited. From Dominoni's account the Italians used compressed air (was he an architect or an engineer?), hence the need for "blanket-man". The German-used nitrogen was inert and could not support self-ignition (and also threw the unburned fuel further before it burned up) and could even extinguish a fire, not make it 10 times worse.

Please record your excellent information. Please drive carefully until you do so.

Bob Lembke

Hi, we have a little booklet going around in our family with all the letters this friend of my grandfather wrote... well not all because at a certain point his sister, i.e. my grandma, burned a big lot of them, I don't really know why. Fact is, that we know much more about the feat of him (is it correct that he should be my father in law, being the brother of my grandmother?) than about my grandfather.

I'll try to gather some info from my father... Paolo Caccia Dominoni da Sillavengo was a civil engineer and, after WWI he worked mainly abroad, in the colonies and in Egypt, where he designed the seat of the Italian Embassy. After WWII he spent several years in recovering the fallen of each side of the El-Alamein Battle, and working in cleaning the many minefields still present there. The Italian Military Cemetery there was designed by him.

Regards

Hi, I would like to make a comment here, being a Slovenian I'am quite familiar with the course of this front, what astonishes me is that you use primarily Italian names for the front (even call it Italian Front), while the main course was going at the river Soča (Isonzo), that was before the war inside the Austrian-Hungarian empire, not in Italy. The only part of the fighting on this front that actually happened in Italy was after the Miracle at Kobarid. The people living there were and are Slovenian. And most of the front is in modern day Slovenia, so you might want to learn slovenian names of the places and look for slovenian literature on this topic (quit a lot of it is translated in English). And yes there is an excellent museum in Kobarid about the war and you can take a tour of the front, taking a look at the cavers, supply routes,...

Yes and if you are going to walk those battlefields you better be in shape! Some of the prettiest country in Europe, lots to see. A terrific little book with great pictures The Front On Soca ISBN 961 231 288 5.
There is a real nice Hotel with a very good restaurant in Kobarid ( Caporetto).
Of course much of the front was not in AH, Piave, Asiago Plateau, all gorgeous country.

Yes, you're right about a part of the front being in Italy, I generalised wich is usualy not a good thing. I also mixed up the whole front and the Soča part of it. But still, I think it's unfair for it to be called Italian front, since a lot of the fighting went on the territory that was and is ethnicly slovenian (we use the term Soča front for it). I went through some of the english literature about it (I have a paper on Western and Soča front) that's why I even got to this forum. And it's mostly using Italian names, I think that at least slovenian names should be used with italian on the territories where slovenian population lives/d. This ofcourse dosen't apply for example for Asiago Plateau as you pointed out.

Just a qucik note here, although slovenian soldiers were fighting for AH army, they thought when fighting on Soča front that they are defending their (slovenian) territory from Italy, wich in the end didn't do them any good, since Italy got a lot of this territory becouse of the London treaty.

Dober Dan, Koktach!;

Dober. Znam.

Nas svedinje,

Bob Lembke

Very good I'd like to see you pronounce that . (It's nasvidenje, together and I comes before the E), might be useful someday

Ow btw I hope my comments aren't offending any italians that might be on this forum (luigi), it's just my view on the history and present.

Drag Koktash;

I really don't speak Slovene. A long time ago I lived and worked in Ljubljana, with some other Americans, and we made the decision to mostly learn Serbo-croatian, as it is both easier and is spoken by about 10 times as many people; additionally, at least at that time the vast majority of Slovenes also spoke Serbo-croatian. Our Slovene friends were disappointed, but I am sure that they knew it was a pragmatic decision. But of course I learned a bit of Slovene, greetings, etc., to dress up my use of the related Serbo-croatian. I have been in "ex-Jugoslavija" about 18 times.

We recently had a thread here on the Soca Front, where I sang the praises of spending time in Slovenija, visiting more of the wonderful Triglav National Park, which covers much of western Slovenija, the museum in Kobarid, etc.

I have to admit that I probably drove through Kobarid eight times before I realized that it was Caparetto, which I just assumed was further west in Italy. Kobarid is, guessing, perhaps five miles east of Italy, on the other side of the Isonzo River. I think that the great bulk of the battlefields, fortifications, etc. from the fighting are in Slovenija. And the new Kobarid museum is focused on the war and is really exceptional and has won awards. I always was interested in the fighting there, before I began seriously studying WW I, as I assumed that my father had fought there, as he told me a first-person story of the fighting there, although he did not specifically say he was there. Then I learned some of his unit was indeed sent there, but (from his Militaer=Pass) an arm wound of his from Verdun and 1916 had become re-infected and he was back in hospital in France; the story must have come from a buddy.

For five summers I climbed in Switzerland and the French Alps with a Slovene friend and mountain guide, Anton (Tony) Sazanov. (His name is Russian, not Slovene, as I am sure that Koktash has noticed, as his father was a Russian POW from WW I that wisely never went home after the war. I met him briefly when he was 95.) The first time we went to Switzerland I hardly knew him, we began driving across Italy on the way to Zermatt, but he insisted that we detour and visit an Italian war cemetary, where he told me with great feeling how the Slovenes were forced to fight against each other by their two occupiers, the Austro-Hungarians and the Italians. The cemetary was quite impressive, sort of a natural amphitheater , with slabs of stone carved with repeated "Presente", or "Present!", for the war dead reporting that they were present. Quite a moving experience. I imagine that Tony must know a lot about the front, as he spent much of his life in the mountains, and I might be able to hook someone up with him as a guide for the area. (He was one of the first people {actually the 32nd} to climb the North Wall (Nord Wand) of the Matterhorn, probably Jugoslavija's most famous climber for 20 years, director of an alpine rescue service, multi-lingual, and a great guy. He must be in his 70's, but powerful and vigorous; I saw him recently.)

I have not been there much in a long while, but for about 15 years I considered Slovenija my second home, and visited every year or two. A combined Slovene/Caparetto Front visit should be a wonderful and inexpensive trip; I offer lots of free advice to anyone interested.

Bob Lembke

Koktash;

I did my few words of Slovene from memory; I have the parrot-like ability of pronouncing languages in which I only really know a few dozen words (like Russian, Mandrin Chinese, Arabic, etc.) quite well, which repeatedly gets me in trouble, as I am the kind of fool that starts conversations in languages in which I know very little. I mis-spelled nasvidenje as I feel that I pronounce it well, having said it several thousands of times, and wrote it phonetically, not bothering to hit one of my half-dozen Slovene-English dictionaries, while I probably have never written it before. As you know, the related expression in Serbo-croatian (Dobar Dan), which I do write, is written in two words, as is the same expression in Czech Dobry Dan and Russian Dobro Dein. To my perception nasvidenje is pronounced with a rather distinct pause in speech after the nas, so I wrote it that way.

(Yes, I know, I am a pompous fool.)

Bob Lembke

Hehe, no problem. Yes I do see why you would rahter learn serbo-croatian (althogh "serbo-croatian" doesn't exist anymore, it was an artificial language in ex-yugoslavia, although they are very very similar they are still to different languages). Hmm, you have a quite interesting history in slovenia I see .

Ow and my name is Anej, koktach is my nickname I use everywhere on the internet.

Damn, I'm late for uni once again.

No offense taken koktach, don't worry

Guys;

Well, I have so far translated about 25 pages of Caccia's diary, and now am in a very interesting part. (He is at the moment advancing down a trench with his men with an Austrian MG firing right over his head, walking on a "carpet" of dead fellow Italian soldiers. I believe that he is about to be wounded, and a couple of his fellow section leaders are about to get killed. A sergeant who had been wounded three times before has just had his arm shattered.) I am finally "getting a handle" on the Italian verbs, which is making this easier.

I have never attempted to read Italian, or study it, with one exception; Three years ago I had an evening in the Austrian state library in Vienna (my wife was next door in an art museum), and I came across a curious book written by an Italian naval captain attempting to prove, partially on the basis of 500 year old ballistic data, that the 42 cm (16.5 inch) howitzers that my grand-father used in Belgium and in Russia did not exist, could not exist; that a workable cannon that large was not physically able to work. Quite a learned book, 500 or 600 years of ballistic history, but basically quite a lot of nonsense, but fascinating. Realizing that I might never again have an opportunity to handle this book, I pitched in, and I was able to skim the book well enough to get a sense of it, and extract some interesting bits and pieces. My wife has fairly good Italian, but I try not to bother her. She only studied it four months, but has very good French and Latin, and also an astonishing head for languages. (She is the person her library goes to when they have to deal with a bit of an African language, or a Central American aboriginal language {e.g., Mayan}, or a dialect of the latter {e.g., Pokoman} She recently had to buy 85 books in the former, and one in the latter, in a single day. She recently found spelling errors in some transliterated Arabic, Hebrew, and Hindi, and she has no background in those languages at all.)

But the diary is quite an interesting book. Caccia seems to have been quite an interesting and productive fellow. Luigi, thanks for your guidance here.

Bob Lembke

Advance apologies if this has already been pointed out in another thread. There is currently a structured hierarchical listing on the Birmingham University First World War Studies site (see below). That said, the Italian 'cupboard' is disitinctly bare. I suspect that this is because they are awaiting submissions. However it does seem that the wheel has already been invented. Many other sections are comprehensively populated, but could only be enhanced by contributions from this polyglot forum.

http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/biblio...Italy/index.htm

There's a book coming out called "White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1918" by Mark Thompson. It is listed on Amazon and I believe it will be released in September '08.

I am presently reading it. I wanted to know about how the history of the Great War in Italy is told by a third party. I must say it is a really good book! Unlike G.Irwing Root's "Battles in the Alps" this one goes deep in the whole story, including political, cultural, social and economical sides. It's bibliography is rich and it includes many recent Italian, Austrian and German sources.
It's too early for detailed review (i'm now at page 133 of 405) but I will post it on Amazon as soon I have finished reading. It will take some time... If it the rest of the book it is at the same level, it will receive my enthusiastic appreciation.
My review of Battles in the Alps is already on Amazon and is not as poisitive.

Regards
Franz