"Those Nice Austro-Hungarian Machine Gunners " Topic

"Beachcombing recently found himself marveling over a passage in Mark Thompson's The White War on Italy's dreadful First World War campaigns. Italy it must be remembered was fighting, for the most part, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Peacock Imperial Throne of central Europe.

Another kind of collusion was so rare that very few instances were recorded on any front. It happened when defending units spontaneously stopped shooting during an attack and urged their enemy to return to their line. On one occasion, the Austrian machine gunners were so effective that the second and third waves of Italian infantry could hardly clamber over the corpses of their comrades. An Austrian captain shouted to his gunners, ‘What do you want, to kill them all? Let them be?' The Austrians stopped firing and called out: ‘Stop, go back! We won't shoot any more. Do you want everyone to die?'

Italian veterans described at least half a dozen such cases. In an early battle, the infantry tore forward, scrambling over the broken ground, screaming and brandishing their rifles. The Austrian trench was uncannily silent. The Italian line broke and clotted as it moved up the slope until there were only groups of men hopping from the shelter of one rock to the next, ‘like toads'. Then a voice called from the enemy line: ‘Italians! Go back! We don't want to massacre you!' A lone Italian jumped up defiantly and was shot; the others turned and ran…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I highly recommend _The White War_; it's very well written.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand