An Italian local historian has found a mass grave of Austrian soldiers from the First World War in the Alps. The front ran at an altitude of 3,800 meters.
Trento – Over 100 years ago, a bitter mountain war raged in the Italian Alps. During the First World War, Italy attacked Imperial-Royal Austria, which at that time included South Tyrol and Trentino in the Alps, parts of Friuli as well as today's Slovenia and Trieste. The front quickly froze along what was then the border between peaks in the Ortler region, northern Lake Garda, in the Dolomites and into the Isonzo Valley in what is now Slovenia.
War in the Alps: Trench warfare at 3,800 meters altitude
Since the Italian entry into the war in 1915, there has also been bitter fighting in the eternal ice in the Ortler and Adamello areas at altitudes of up to 3,800 meters. The cold and avalanches alone caused many deaths. On June 13, 1918, the Austrians carried out a mock attack towards Bormio at the Tonale Pass on the border between today's Trentino and Lombardy – this Company Avalanche. They wanted to distract from the major attack much further east on the Piave. The attack failed on the first day due to the well-fortified Italian positions, and the Austrian troops suffered heavy losses.
On the Italian side, the officer of the Valcamonica Battalion, Capitano Ubaldo Ingravalle, kept a diary of the terrible events. In it he also reports on mass graves for the Imperial and Royal soldiers who came from all parts of the Habsburg Empire as far as Bosnia and Montenegro. His great-grandson, the mountaineer and local historian Sergio Boem (59), who lives on Lake Garda, found the 1,500-page diary, studied it and discovered one of the mass graves according to his grandfather's information. He found the skeletons of twelve Austrian soldiers in a shell crater on the Cima Cady at an altitude of over 2,000 meters above sea level in the summer of 2022, reports the Austrian news agency apa.
Grandfather's diary led researchers to mass grave
“The mass grave described in the records actually exists,” the newspaper also reports Ladige.it. And the Autonomous Province of Trento confirmed the incredible discovery: “Twelve skeletal bodies have been recovered in recent days from a mass grave above the Tonale Pass with the approval of the Office of Archaeological Heritage of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Province of Trento.” The General Commissariat for the Preserving the memory of the fallen The Ministry of Defense, which is exclusively responsible for the recovery of human remains of soldiers, took over the management of the recovery.
At the Muse science museum in Trento, 15 British experts in forensic anthropology from the University of Durham are currently examining the skeletons. There was a loud noise next to them ORF Parts of the soldiers' personal equipment such as crampons, boots, gas mask bags, tools and other personal items were also found. Their condition leaves little hope of being able to determine the identity of the fallen. They often have skull injuries caused by bullets. According to the investigation, the dead should be buried in a military cemetery.
Researcher wants to save more soldiers' graves from looters
According to Boem, another 82 skeletons are in a mass grave on the border between Trentino and the province of Lombardy on Lombardy soil. The researcher complains about the Lombard authorities' lack of interest in finding the grave. “I feel it is a moral duty to secure a name and a dignified grave for these soldiers who were once our enemies (…). I see this as a late reparation that we owe these young soldiers,” Boem explains to the apa. He hopes that next spring the relevant authorities will carry out the necessary investigations to find the mass grave.
Boem: “We want to prevent the remains of the soldiers from being discovered by people searching the mountains for World War I equipment, which is highly sought after by collectors.” With the help of two lawyers specializing in military law, Boem is trying to that the search for the large mass grave begins. Boem has written a book about his research, “Sui prati del Tonale 94 stelle alpine” (94 edelweiss flowers in the meadows of Tonale 94).
The Italian Alps are littered with relics from World War I
The region is littered with relics of the Mountain War of 1915-1918. There is still a cannon on the Cresta Croce south of the Tonale Pass at an altitude of 3236 meters, which was dismantled into individual parts and dragged by horses into the eternal ice in 1916.
Sometimes the retreating glaciers also uncover the dead of the First World War. Recently, a series of rockslides in the Italian Alps caused a stir, and a road was buried at Lake Ledro. Even the Brenner motorway is no longer safe.
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