Flattening time in the Dolomites

I have just come back from high mountain trekking in the Dolomites – the northeastern part of the Italian Alps which are half Alto Adige (South Tyrol and German speaking) and half Veneto (Italian speaking). Eight days of walking with no other pleasures but hot tea once the rifugio was reached and a hot shower – when lucky. Extenuating, exhausting, exhilarating – I highly recommend it.

One of the great surprises along our way – we were following our own version of the historical Alta Via numero 1, comprising about 80kms of rough terrain over stone gorges, mule tracks, military roads and high peaks, in amongst the cows and the marmots – was the Rifugio Lagazuoi, standing at 2752m.

The Lagazuoi peak was a highly contested area of one of the most surprising and least well known mine wars of the First World War. When I say mine wars, I mean that each side – Austrian and Italian, opposing each other – excavated miles and miles of tunnels in the rock in order to blow up the enemy’s defensive posts – from underneath! An absolutely incredible story.

The opening to this tunnel – which frankly re-awakened my tired senses and my tired legs and spurred me on to keep climbing – gives onto a dark cramped slippery corridor climbing 230m up and burrowing through the mountain for 1100m. Walking in these mountains is hard enough – with all the technical gear of today’s mountaineers… but mining in them? While being fired upon? Through the damp weather of autumn, the freezing fogs and snowstorms of winter – wearing only leather boots and furs? The mining operations resembled in my mind those of 19^th century Wales mining districts – all on top of mountains.

Shelters, mountain tracks, tunnels were constructed predominantly at night or on foggy days. Rusty barbed wire, the signs of craters in the mountainside, old boot soles, trap doors like balconies overlooking valleys, signalling and firing posts, hollows hewn into the rock face to hold ammunitions, gun chambers, sleeping quarters…

The frustration of this kind of warfare is evident in the archival sources – which I browsed through that evening, in the warmth of the bar at the Rifugio Lagazuoi, while sipping an amaretto. Records of the Austrian 96^th Infantry Brigade in October 1915 state:

On the ledge of Lagazuoi is a machine gun nest. A real torment… To oppose the machine gun, a patrol of grenade launchers must be detached from the Lagazuoi emplacements to strike the enemy from above with hand grenades.

A war fought from vantage points above and secret tunnels underneath – an all immersive war, which changed the landscape using 30,000kg of explosives at a time, dislodging hundreds of thousands of cubic rock at a time.

One of the Italian heroes – by the name of Maggiore Martini wrote in May 1917:

At 22.10 on the 21^st, a tremendous rumbling shook the whole mountain, completely sinking the trincea avanzata (the front trench) and splintering the Guglia (spire) while the Dente Filiponi, prodigiously intact in its immense size slipped onto the Trincerone (large trench) turning into a providential bulwark for our further defence.

Imagine – the Austrians have hauled up between 24,000 and 30,480 kgs of explosives into the far end of the tunnel they have excavated, then lit it, then escaped, hoping this would be the master stroke to expose the enemy. The mountain rumbles like a frighteningly huge earthquake, and the entire rock slides as one piece – providing extra shelter for the Italians.

Sheesh – time for a martini.

This must be the highest open air museum in Europe. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the audioguide sign on the impressive graphic panels… who on earth would climb a whole day and then take out an audioguide as if they were walking down the Brompton Road in London’s museum district?

The faces of the soldiers staring out at you while you are struggling up the same mountains where they fought for months on end are a stark reminder that this is a place where history still breathes. The fact it is still a hard climb today achieves what I think is a great interpretative aim, applicable to many museums: it brings visitors up close and personal to the history. It flattens time, by making you share some of the physical struggle that was a day to day condition of these soldiers.