Memories of War: Sass de Stria

Sass de Stria seen from the Falzarego Pass.

Sass de Stria is a 2477 meters high dolomite mountain, towering over the Falzarego Pass, in front of Lagazuoi. Its location made it possible to keep under fire both the Falzarego Pass and the nearby Valparola Pass, barring access to the Val Badia (Badia Valley), and to act as a lateral protection for the Monte Sief-Col di Lana massif; here the Austro-Hungarian Empire had planned to build a fortress, armed with two to four long range howitzers in armoured positions and provided with an armored observatory dome, for the defense of the Sella Sief and the Dolomites Road towards Cortina d'Ampezzo; the fort, however, was never built due to lack of funds.

At the beginning of the war, the Sass de Stria was garrisoned by a platoon of Austro-Hungarian sappers of the Arbeiter Batallon III / 29, under the command of Cadet Scheibeck.

A few weeks after the start of the war, on June 14, 1915, General Pietro Marini, commander of the Italian IX Corps, ordered the 17th Division to carry out a reconnaissance towards the Sass de Stria to occupy the Selletta (a key position below the summit, defended by trenches, where the small garrison was stationed), and entrusted this task to Colonel Arrighi of the 7th Alpini Regiment; the troops available were the Val Chisone Battalion (belonging to the 3rd Alpini Regiment and under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ratti), a section of the 36th Mountain Artillery Battery, the 2nd Battalion of the 46th Infantry Regiment (Lieutenant Colonel Campolieti), a group of the 13th Artillery Regiment on Monte Pore (for support) and in reserve, the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion of the 81st Infantry Regiment (Major Medaglia).

In the early hours of June 15, the 229th Alpini Company (Captain Carlo Trivulzio) of the Val Chisone Battalion, under cover of darkness, climbed the steep southern face and dropped on the Selletta between the top of the mountain and smaller peak (Point 2305). A firefight broke out with the Austro-Hungarian garrison which lasted half an hour, until 6:30 am, when, after their commander was seriously wounded, the garrison of 38 men (two officers and 36 soldiers) surrendered. The Alpini (besides the 229th Company, the 228th and 230th Company had also been sent for support and reinforcement) started to fortify the newly conquered position, and here resisted under Austro-Hungarian artillery fire, which began around 1 P.M. (previously, the Austro-Hungarian command had not realized what had happened) with a 120 mm shells.

The support attacks assigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 46th Infantry Regiment (6th Company in the vanguard, followed by the 5th and the 7th Company, and later reinforced by the 9th Company) against Valparola Pass, however, did not fare equally well: at first the infantry, having exclusively reconnaissance tasks, stopped, then it continued to advance, helped by the fog; but the attacks against the enemy positions, well defended by barbed wire and held by the 2nd Company of the Standschützen Enneberg Battalion, as well as twenty Standschützen of Silz and seven Landesschützen. Over a hundred Italians were killed (including Captain Arturo Cernuschi and four other officers) or wounded (including three officers), while the Austro-Hungarians only suffered six wounded.

The consequence was that the Alpini of the Val Cordevole Battalion remained isolated and in a precarious position: on June 18th, therefore, General Pietro Marini (later removed from command) ordered them to withdraw from Sass de Stria. They did so just in time to avoid the "countermove" by the German soldiers of the 1st Jäger Regiment (twelve men led by Corporal Weis), who had built a sort of "raft" with logs and planks and filled it with stones, rock debris and hand grenades, which they then proceeded to push from the top so that it would fall on the Selletta (which they believed to be still occupied by the Alpini).

Losses of the Val Chisone Battalion, in the action of June 15 to 18, were one soldier killed and eight wounded.

German Alpenkorps troops soon proceeded to re-occupy the position; they were later replaced by units of the 3rd Kaiserjäger Regiment. The modest original positions were expanded, with the construction of trenches and parapets along the ridge of the mountain; a system of tunnels in a radial pattern, linking the caves dug into the rock, was also created.

On 9 July 1915 the Val Chisone Battalion, moving from Monte Pore, attacked again the Selletta, supported by a mountain battery and operating in cooperation with the 81st Infantry Regiment (which was to attack the Vonbank trench near Valparola Pass); the infantry, however, was repelled by the 2nd Company of the 165th Landsturm Regiment (Lieutenant Höpperger) and the Alpini, whom had initially managed to prevail over the defenders of foresummit of Sass de Stria (the 1st Company of the 165th Landsturm Regiment, under Lieutenant Schoenegger), were forced to fall back to their starting positions on Mount Pore.

On the same day, an Italian patrol of four men, led by Warrant Officer Matteo Saba, entered into two enemy trenches, capturing three prisoners and several weapons before having to withdraw under violent enemy fire. During the retreat, one of the Italian soldiers was killed and the prisoners rebelled; Private Giovanni Battista Solaris, already wounded in the head and arm, took on them, killing one and recapturing another with the help of another soldier.

Two days later, the artillery of the Sass de Stria helped stop an Italian attack on the Col di Lana, shelling an infantry regiment in the rear and forcing it to retreat after inflicting heavy losses.

On July 23, 1915 there was one of the first cases of "insubordination" among the Italian troops; two soldiers of the 81st Infantry Regiment, destined for service outposts, rendered themselves unavailable for twenty-four hours, only turning up at the return of the company in the shelters, when the serice was over. The two soldiers were tried by the war tribunal in Agordo on August 18, 1915, and found guilty of refusing to carry out war service in the presence of the enemy: one was shot, the other sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.

On August 8, 1915 the artillery placed on Sass de Stria helped stopp another Italian attack on the Austro-Hungarian lines of Falzarego; the next day Sass de Stria itself was be attacked by the Italian infantry, after a preparatory artillery bombardment. The Bersaglieri were able to penetrate several trenches, making their way by throwing hand grenades, but were later repelled.

On August 15, a new operation took place against the Sass de Stria, by the Alpini Battalion Val Chisone; as support operations, units of the 81st and 82nd Infantry Regiment occupied the Buchenstein Castle (15 August) and the Andraz Castle (16 August).

Then followed, for a few months, a stalemate characterized by skirmishes between patrols, especially around the Selletta. The snipers provoked continuous losses among carriers supplying the garrison of the Selletta, who were forced to walk on exposed and uncovered paths.

The summit, considered inaccessible to Italian troops, was not permanently manned by the Austro-Hungarians (there was an artillery observatory, only manned in daytime), but much of the mountain was fortified with trenches and tunnels, and there were also artillery positions that allowed to control a large part of the Dolomites Road to Cortina. The Selletta on the southeast side was fortified with trenches and garrisoned, in October 1915, by a unit of the 3rd Kaiserjäger Regiment, while unit department of the same regiment was stationed on the other side, at Point 2325.

At a lower altitude, on the orders of Field Marshal Ludwig Goiginger, a 500 meters long tunnel (started even before the entry into the war, in the summer of 1914, but completed much later), provided with slits, was dug; this gallery allowed the Austrians to supply the garrison of the Selletta without being exposed to Italian fire.

In October 1915, as part of a larger Italian operation aimed at conquering the Valparola pass and the pass that separated the Mount Sief from the Settsass, Colonel Achille Papa planned an attempt to conquer the summit of Sass de Stria: a patrol of volunteers would capture the top with a surprise action, and would be reached shortly thereafter by a platoon with a machine-gun section, and then by the rest of the company. Once the top would be occupied and the reinforcements arrived, it would be possible to fire from the top down on the Austro-Hungarians, targeting the Selletta and facilitating the access of some platoons that would climb over the back of the Sass de Stria and get behind the Austro-Hungarian troops entrenched in Valparola, firing on these positions to facilitate a new attack against them.

Second Lieutenant Mario Fusetti, of the 11th Company of the 81st Infantry Regiment ("Torino" Brigade), volunteered for the enterprise along with 14 other men: officer cadets Teofilo Rapicavoli, Moscatelli and Giacomo Magnifico, sergeants Giuseppe Serpetti and Leopoldo Gironi, corporals Romeo Martini and Giovanni Ludovisi, and privates Luigi Aresi, Giovanni Barzoni, Carlo Fiori, Armando Montanari, Pietro Pasini, Pietro Segatori and Lorenzo Pinci. Fusetti thoroughly studied the difficult task: coming from the south (the northern side, more accessibile, was entirely in enemy hands), his squad would have to climb a gully (which the Austrians considered impassable) in the vertical and unstable southern face of Sass de Stria, without getting noticed by the Austro-Hungarian sentinels. The reinforcement platoon would be led by Second Lieutenant Braschi.

After receiving absolution from the chaplain, at sunset on 17 October 1915, the Fusetti's fifteen men departed from Buchenstein Castle.

The patrol began the climb in the night in absolute silence, putting in place a fixed rope on the southwest face of the Sass de Stria. The climb was very difficult, and lasted longer than expected; the first soldiers moved some stones that wounded one of the men below them, and three of his companions volunteered to bring him back.

It was this incident that originated the failure of the expedition. When the three soldiers with the wounded man met Second Lieutenant Braschi's platoon, fearing to be accused of desertion, they lied and said that the entire squad was coming back; Braschi therefore decided to stop, even though five of his soldiers decided to continue on their own and reach Fusetti's squad.

The latter, meanwhile, had reached at 2:oo AM on 18 October the col between the summit and Point 2325; to their surprise, they found no Austrians there, so they cut the phone line that came down from the observatory and waited for reinforcements.

Since these did not arrive, Fusetti decided to go to the top, leaving a few men to guard the Selletta; Fusetti and his men reached the top at 4:00 in the morning, finding it deserted as well, again to their surprise. After planting on top of the Italian flag, Fusetti placed his men so that, when the Italian attack in Valparola would start, they could hit the Vonbank trench, which blocked the access to the valley. With the arrival of the five men from Braschi's platoon who had gone ahead independently, Fusetti thought that others would shortly come; unfortunately, it was not so.

At dawn, instead, came from Valparola the Austro-Hungarian observers squad (Lieutenant Karl Heinrich Stradal, two other officers and four telephonists), sent to guard the top in daytime; the Italian squad commanded them to surrender, and a firefight broke out between the two groups. An Austrian corporal was captured and an artillery lieutenant was severely wounded; Stradal however escaped, and gave the alarm to the guard post number 10.

At nine in the morning the local Austrian commander, Major Ullman, was informed that a firefight had been going on for half an hour between the camp guard and an Italian patrol that had climbed Sass de Stria; Ullman dispatched there Lieutenant Hazon, a Bergführer and twenty Kaiserjäger of the 9th Company, whom, however, were immediately located by the Italian positions of the Martini Ledge (on Lagazuoi), fired at and forced to retreat for cover. Two more units, respectively composed of six and fourteen jäger, then intervened, climbing from the opposite side (Edelweiss Trench), led by warrant officers Rieder and Frankauser. Meanwhile, Fusetti and his men were kept nailed on top by the artillerymen and by the men of guard post no. 10, led by Stradal.

Fusetti ordered his men to organize the defense: some were tasked with firing with rifles and bombards the Austrian positions on the Selletta, in order to facilitate the attack by other units of the 81st Infantry who were already emerging from the forest; others were stationed in a natural trench to the north, to repel Kaiserjäger attempting to climb, and to protect at all costs the point from where the reinforcements were supposed to come.

Meanwhile, Second Lieutenant Braschi had retreated with his men till the margins of the woods; here he met the company commander, who ordered him to go back to see what had happened to Fusetti's patrol.

Braschi's men resumed the climb with the first light of day, and in mid-climb they heard a voice from above, shouting them "Come Italians, Sasso di Stria is taken." This incitement galvanized the men, who continued with greater vigor, but it was a trap: waiting for them there was an old Austrian with a thick bristly beard, who started to throw against them hand grenades which he took from a cavity in the rock. He was an elderly Standschütze from the Enneberg Battalion. The bombs, however, did not hit anyone; the Austrian nevertheless continued to throw them without interruption, so much so that the Italians began to mock him, calling him "the pharmacist": "But for God's sake! He has not yet completed the supply of pills that damned guy?" And he replied, "Forward Italians, if you have courage."

In the end, however, Braschi's platoon stopped, believing that the summit was already occupied by Fusetti and there was no longer need for them.

They were wrong: it was true that Fusetti's patrol controlled the summit, but it was also true that the squad was completely surrounded and in desperate need of reinforcements; Fusetti also began to make signals to request artillery support.

At eleven o'clock, the reinforcement platoon resumed the climb, but at this point the Austrians were well entrenched and easily repelled them, killing Lieutenant Giovanni Salvati (the commander of the machine-gun section, he was hit by three bullets while looking for a suitable location to place his weapons), Officer Cadet Giulio Amicizia, Lance Corporal Pierotti and Private Aloisio. Second Lieutenant Braschi was surrounded and captured along with about twenty of his men, some of them (privates Paloschi, Buzzoni and De Angelis) wounded.

The men left by Fusetti to guard of the upper end of the gully were attacked and forced to retreat to the top, joining the others that were already there, with no reinforcements and surrounded. Fusetti's men, posted among the rocks (they had also built a low wall of rocks and snow to shelter from enemy fire), were hunted down by over fifty Austro-Hungarians. Fusetti himself, as he leaned to shoot towards the Selletta, was killed by a shot in the forehead; Corporal Ludovisi and Privates Barzoni and Pinci were also killed. Cadet Officer Rapicavoli, when he climbed on top, found Fusetti lying on the ground, with his face to the sky and a trickle of blood coming out of his forehead. Rapicavoli took the Italian flag, still waving on the summit, and spread like a shroud on Fusetti's face.

Cadet Officer Magnifico, Sergeant Serpetti, Corporal Martini and Private Montanari were wounded, Magnifico seriously so; most of them were wounded especially in the arms, because their position had forced them to protrude them to shoot.

The survivors surrendered to Lieutenant Stradal around four in the afternoon, when they ran out of ammunition, including those of the dead.

The bodies of Fusetti and the other dead were thrown into a rocky ravine in the steep southern face of Sass de Stria; Fusetti's father, after the war, tried in vain to find his remains (in the 1930s the family also offered a reward for anyone who found the body), but they were never found. Thus came true, on the other hand, Fusetti's last will, which he had announced in the letter written to the family two days before his death: to be buried there where he had fallen, among his soldiers.

Sass de Stria remained in Austro-Hungarian hands until the end of the war.

Already the day after the unfortunate action by Fusetti, on October 19, 1915, a new clash took place on that mountain, when an attack by units of the 3rd Bersaglieri Regiment towards Valparola Pass was stopped by the machine guns of the Selletta; Lance Corporal Giovanni Del Puglia and Sergeant Michael Pantini were killed, while the platoon leader, Lieutenant Alfredo Magera, was wounded in the thigh.

In early December 1915, a searchlight was installed on Sass de Stria to illuminate the Italian positions of the Martini Ledge, on nearby Lagazuoi; a small Italian cannon tried in vain to destroy it.

During 1916 and 1917, the Austro-Hungarian soldiers manning the Sass de Stria were often given considerable trouble by the Italian positions of the Martini Ledge, who kept firing against the Selletta outpost and also hit the bearers; often the Austro-Hungarian artillery and machine guns on Sass de Stria dueled with those of the Martini Ledge. On one occasion, two 72.5 mm guns of the Sass de Stria took aim on a single Italian machine gun which pelted the Austro-Hungarian kitchens in Valparola; after a long duel, the machine gun was put out of action and its servant, Sergeant Pietro Costa of the 6th Machine Gun Section, Belluno Battalion, was seriously wounded.

On December 31, 1915 the artillery of the Sass de Stria heavily bombed the Martini Ledge in preparation for the first Austro-Hungarian attempt to neutralize this position; then followed the blast of a 300 kg mine which triggered a small landslide, but the Italian lines remained intact.

On May 21, 1917, the 72.5 mm guns of Sass de Stria fired sixty shots against the discharge of debris from an Italian countermine gallery, designed to counter the excavation of an Austrian mine tunnel against the Martini Ledge; the next day, following the explosion of the mine (24 tons of explosives), the artillery of the Sass de Stria (a Erhardt cannon and a 80 mm gun on the Selletta) opened fire on the positions of the Martini Ledge, but even this attempt brought to nothing.

Another target of the artillery located on Sass de Stria was the Italian cable car which supplied the Col dei Bos positions.

All fighting in the area ceased with the Italian retreat after Caporetto, in November 1917.ù
Today, the trenches and galleries on Sass de Stria can easily be reached on foot startinf from the Valparola Pass (2,183 m).