[Sidenote: First time of gallery-barracks.]
"I found many difficulties in the way of putting into practice on the Col di Lana the man-saving theories I had seen in process of development in the Argonne. At that time the Austrians--who had appreciated the great importance of that mountain from the outset--had us heavily out-gunned while mining in the hard rock was too slow to make it worth while until some single position of crucial value hung in the balance. So--well, I simply did the best I could under the circumstances. The most I could do was to give my men as complete protection as possible while they were not fighting, and this end was accomplished by establishing them in galleries cut out of the solid rock. This was, I believe, the first time the 'gallery-barracks'--now quite the rule at all exposed points--were used on the Italian front.
"There was no other way in the beginning but to drive the enemy off the Col di Lana trench by trench, and this was the task I set myself to toward the end of July. What made the task an almost prohibitive one was the fact that the Austrian guns from Corte and Cherz--which we were in no position to reduce to silence--were able to rake us unmercifully. Every move we made during the next nine months was carried out under their fire, and there is no use in denying that we suffered heavily. I used no more men than I could possibly help using, and the Higher Command was very generous in the matter of reserves, and even in increasing the strength of the force at my disposal as we gradually got more room to work in. By the end of October my original command of a battalion had been increased largely.
[Sidenote: Austrians hold one side and summit.]
[Sidenote: Austrian position seems impregnable.]
"The Austrians made a brave and skilful defense, but the steady pressure we were bringing to bear on them gradually forced them back up the mountain. By the first week in November we were in possession of three sides of the mountain, while the Austrians held the fourth side and--but most important of all--the summit. The latter presented a sheer wall of rock, more than 200 metres high, to us from any direction we were able to approach it, and on the crest of this cliff--the only point exposed to our artillery fire--the enemy had a cunningly concealed machine-gun post served by fourteen men. Back and behind, under shelter in a rock gallery, was a reserve of 200 men, who were expected to remain safely under cover during a bombardment and then sally forth to any infantry attack that might follow it. The handful in the machine-gun post, it was calculated, would be sufficient, and more than sufficient, to keep us from scaling the cliff before their reserves came up to support them; and so they would have been if there had been _only_ an infantry attack to reckon with. It failed to allow sufficiently, however, for the weight of the artillery we were bringing up, and the skill of our gunners. The apparent impregnability of the position was really its undoing.