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Western Front; Part of the European theatre of World War I: Clockwise from top left: Men of the Royal Irish Rifles, concentrated in the trench, right before going over the top on the First day on the Somme; British soldier carries a wounded comrade from the battlefield on the first day of the Somme; A young German soldier during the Battle of Ginchy; American infantry storming a German bunker ...
Austro-Hungarian trench at the peak of Ortler, the highest trench in the First World War (3850m). The White War (Italian: Guerra Bianca, German: Gebirgskrieg, Hungarian: Fehér Háború) [2] [3] is the name given to the fighting in the high-altitude Alpine sector of the Italian front during the First World War, principally in the Dolomites, the Ortles-Cevedale Alps and the Adamello-Presanella ...
Italian soldiers in the Alps. The Italian Front covered only a small part of northern Italy and the western border of Austria-Hungary. The fighting here began on 23 May 1915 and lasted till 3 November 1918. Most of the fighting was concentrated on a very small bit of land between the Alps and the Adriatic, near the town of Trieste.
The front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front, but at high altitudes and with extremely cold winters. Fighting along the front displaced much of the local population, and several thousand civilians died from malnutrition and illness in Kingdom of Italy and Austro-Hungarian refugee camps. [7]
Once Italy had joined in on the side of the Allies, the war became a three front war. The big Western front was in France, and Italian Front in the mountains of Italy, and the Eastern Front was on the border of Russia. [3] Because Germany and Austria-Hungary had to split their armies, they were severely weakened.
Over the course of the year the division received infantry and Bersaglieri units for month long stints in the front line trenches, but its core units remained Alpini groups. After the Battle of Mount Ortigara the 2nd Alpini Group was replaced by the 3rd Group on 9 July and on 20 July 1917 the I Alpini Grouping (1st, 3rd Group) and IV Alpini ...
In the 'Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918', published in 1920, Colonel E.M. Jack wrote "The 1:20,000 was the map commonly used by the Artillery, and as trenches could be shown on it in sufficient detail to be of use to the infantry it was the most useful scale of all, and the one that could least easily be dispensed with."
The Italian troops had some initial successes, but as in the Western Front, the campaign soon evolved into trench warfare. The main difference was that the trenches had to be dug in the Alpine rocks and glaciers instead of in the mud, and often up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft) of altitude.