Along the Isonzo Front on the Walk of Peace

The car had climbed steeply and slowly along stony, fearsomely rutted tracks through woods of mixed hardwood and deciduous trees and around multiple hairpin bends, before arriving at a parking place where the trees petered out. The rain strengthened and clouds loured over the peaks enclosing the high pastures in the shadows of Krasji Vrh, Kal and Vrsic, 1773, 1698 and 1897 metres high respectively, as we set off on foot. We had seen and passed no one since skirting the hamlet of Dreznica Ravne some hundreds of metres below us and our reading had told us the track we had just traversed had originally been constructed as a mule track for the resupply of our aiming point, Zaprikraj; a system of Italian trenches and gun positions situated at the col of the Predolina pass, which were constructed following the Italian conquest of the peak of Mt Krn in June 1915. These are now designated an outdoor museum and this was day 3 of our exploration of parts of the Pot Miru – the Walk of Peace – which runs from the Alps to the Adriatic through Slovenia and a small part of Italy along the line of the Isonzo fronts, named for the river now known as the Soca, but which will be referred to here as the Isonzo.

Over three long bloody years, the Austro-Hungarian and Italian Armies confronted each other along the length of the Isonzo in brutal conditions before the decisive 12^th battle where, against the run of previous events, the Austro-Hungarian army bolstered by German troops, routed the Italians in October 1917, advancing 130 kms into Italian territory over 3 days. In contrast, the Italian advance during the three previous years had stalled at approximately 35 kms. The breakthrough, led by the German troops took place on the mountain ridge of Kolovrat on the west bank of the upper reaches of the Isonzo where the Italians had convinced themselves the terrain was too difficult for a serious assault on their lines.The name of the small town in the valley below, known in Italian as Caporetto, in German as Karfreit and today as Kobarid remains embedded in the Italian language as a synonym for a total disaster.

At Zaprikraj, the Italian defenders held on during the first day of the battle against the 55^th Austro-Hungarian Division, but were ordered to withdraw during the night as the valley behind them had already fallen. It seems very likely they then joined the disorderly stampede of Italians heading for the plains of Friuli so eloquently described by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. Later in our travels we were told that it was the subsequent capture of the monumental quantities of materiel abandoned by the Italians – including an estimated 600,000 pairs of underpants, which enabled the Austro-Hungarian armies to continue the fight, prolonging the end of the war.

Our walk through pastures of belled cows and with the ever present sound of cuckoos, took us winding along what felt at times like a Scottish glen with bare, scree marked slopes, past huts for use by herders in the summer, fields edged in repurposed barbed wire, forestry and scrub until the remains of fortifications were evident either side of the track and an information board was visible. Beech trees are engulfing the trenches, but it is still possible to walk along them and see the small shelters gouged from the rock, the fragments of metal protruding from the earth and the concrete of the gun emplacements. The poor weather, remoteness and the absence of any others focussed the mind on the difficulties of resupply and existence for those holding the line with a visitors’ book showing we were the first visitors for five days. Other day’s walking emphasised these difficulties, as we attempted to cross the raging Moznica on the leg between Log pod Mangartom and Fort Kluze and negotiated the rubble of the landslide which had taken out the road along the Tolmin Gorge to the chapel at Javorca.

The now tranquil landscape along the Isonzo remains heavily dotted with reminders of this area’s time in the front line. As elsewhere, the war brought technological change to the area with aerial resupply lines – the forerunners of today's cable cars, utilised by both sides to keep their troops fed and supplied with ammunition. At Log pod Mangartom at the head of the valley, the construction of a narrow gauge railway by the Austrians, which ran above the water run off channel from a lead mine higher up the valley, provided an extremely important route for the invisible movement of men and equipment to the front. The exit to this tunnel remains at Stoln together with a display of fascinating photographs of it in use and the area during the period of the war. Similar and more accessible areas of trenches to those at Zaprikraj can be found on Kolovrat and in numerous other locations. Small chapels previously used by soldiers or erected in their memory lie at the heads of the valleys, and few villages are without monuments, cemeteries or museums dedicated to the conflict. One of the best of these is the excellent museum in Kobarid, handily located next to the Walk of Peace Visitors’ Centre, providing information on accommodation, guides and other places of interest along the route. A guide book to the route is available there, as is a map.

Kobarid is also the site of an Italian ossuary or charnel house containing the remains of over 7,000 Italian casualties. Constructed during the mid-thirties and opened in September 1938 by Mussolini (who had himself served on the front), the monument was part of an attempt by the Italian authorities to recast the fallen of the conflict as martyrs to the cause of Irredentism – the Italian belief that the lands around the head of the Adriatic were historically part of Italy and should be reclaimed as part of their nation. There are further Italian charnel houses at Oslavia/Oslavje andRedipuglia - the latter containing a mind blowing 100,187 dead.   A visit to the German charnel house at Tolmin, beautifully sited overlooking the river, revealed it too, had been built during the rise of Fascism, with a similar mission to evoke a heroic past in its simple monumental forms bearing a kinship with those of the former SS castle at Wewelsburg outside Paderborn.      

Our travels took us onward from Slovenia and into Italy at Gorizia, heavily shelled until its capture by Italian troops during the 6^th battle of the Isonzo in August 1916 and remaining under their control until the 12^th battle in October the following year. This former pearl of the Hapsberg empire is now a faded backwater on the border with Slovenia displaying flashes of a past elegance and a dearth of petrol stations, caused by the much cheaper price of fuel on the other side of the border.  It provided an ideal stepping off point for the last stop on our explorations of the Isonzo front, the museum at Monte San Michele, which occupies the site of an Italian gun emplacement on the ridge won by the Italians during the 6^th Battle in 1916. This was never used as the front moved eastwards and the eventual successful attack took place much further upstream, but the Italian and Austro-Hungarian trenches around the site and the many memorials in the area to troops of both sides bear testimony to the fierce fighting that took place here in the earlier stages of the war.

Today the area is heavily wooded and the appearance of this limestone plateau is greatly altered from the barren, moonlike appearance it had pre-war when this area, known as the Carso/Karst/Kras, was a byword for poverty and the land denuded by overgrazing. The small museum here has embraced technology firmly with a holographic displays and audio (the latter not functioning on the day of our visit) included in the visit to the gun emplacements and the museum rebooted as an immersive virtual/augmented reality experience. How you feel about this will probably depend on your age!  Our visit coincided with that of a group of school children there to study the use of technology, rather than the events commemorated by it. Whilst it was interesting to see technology applied in this way, it clearly suffered from a number of glitches and numbers visiting the museum are limited by the availability of headsets and the length of the experience. Of greatest interest was the electronic map showing the movement of the frontline over time, which would have been fun to play with, but which was guarded by a man wearing a slightly incongruous pair of waiter’s white gloves and whose knowledge of the events of the war in this area was encyclopaedic – and a little difficult to stem! The contrast with do it yourself nature of the trenches at Zaprikraj could not have been greater.

For those who may not have a strong interest in military history, the Pot Miru provides much more. The Slovenian countryside is beautiful and unspoilt, the wildflowers and birds in mid-May were fantastic, the prices “attractive” and the walk interesting and varied – if sometimes a little erratically marked both on the map and path. Our sense of where we were was greatly improved by the purchase of an additional general walking map for the area, showing all routes and not just the Pot Miru. For those enjoying outdoor activities, the upper Isonzo is now a base for rafting, canyoning, paragliding and all types of adventure with Bovecs providing a good base for exploration. The Italian part also provided much food for thought and next time it would be interesting to explore the Friuli vineyards between Gorizia and the sea on ebike – a variation being heavily promoted in the town.  Go!                                                                                                                                  

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