Over 600,000 Italians lie dead on the battlefields of the Great War with another 170,000 dying of illness or wounds in hospitals further back. Buried in small battlefield cemeteries, like elsewhere across the destroyed landscapes of Europe, remains in the small cemeteries were gathered up into larger cemeteries. Unlike the American example of offering repatriation of remains to families – two thirds of American families opted for that option – here in Italy, only about 50,000 remains returned to the families. By 1927, too many cemeteries remained for the State to maintain upkeep. So, the huge ossuaries – charnel houses, in England – came onto the scene. Here at the Caporetto Ossuary, mythology transposed defeat into victory of sorts. A victory leading to the Blackshirt March on Rome; a renewed and greater Italy.
PREWAR OSSUARIES
Ossuaries dated to the beginning of the Kingdom of Italy. Two large ossuaries rose above the battlefields of Solferino and San Martino dell Battaglia from the Second War of the Risorgimiento of 1859. These are traditional semi-religious ossuaries located inside chapel walls. Bones and skulls take the place of frescoes.
A few years later, in 1866 – the Third War of the Unification also known as the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Italy fought another huge battle a little further to the east at Custozza (There were actually two battles at Custozza. The other in 1848 during the First War of the Unification.).
Here, the ossuary sits with the remains of about two thousand soldiers directly beneath a tower allowing visitors to look out over the former battlefield. At San Martino, a tower exists but is separate from the bone house. These represented the main form of military ossuaries before World War 1.
EARLY POST WAR THEMES
Early on after the war, ossuaries began the process of centralizing the scattered remains. Two reflect the style of the older tower of bones of the late Risorgimiento – Pasubio and Kostanjevica na Krasu – renamed in Italian as Castagnevizza. Pasubio began in 1920 with completion in 1926. King Victor Emmanuel III dedicated the tower. Some 59 gold medal of honor (Medaglie d’Oro) lie in a central crypt on the ground floor, including the body of General Pecori Giraldi who commanded the First Army’s efforts here on Monte Pasubio. He wished to be buried with his men and after his death, his remains moved here in 1952.
Two corridors lead to the burial recesses of over 5,000 other soldiers – 3,400 unknown and 60 Austro-Hungarians. In the outer corridors, four sets of 450 individuals whose identity was known. The inner passages contain 94 communal graves of the unknown. The bones are visible through glass, a feature found at many ossuaries including the vast French ossuary at Douamont near Verdun. The Pasubio Ossuary tower faces east with a chapel on the first floor and frescoes of various saints on the walls. Christianity and Italian valor mixed together not so subtly.
PASUBIO MINATURE ON THE CARSO
The Ossuary at Kostanjevica contained several thousand remains from battles on the wild bloody terrain of the Carso, a vast limestone plateau lying south of Gorizia. The Carso served as the front door to Trieste which remained closed. This land, like the area around Kobarid-Caporetto, became a part of the Kingdom of Italy between the end of the Great War and the end of World War 2. It looked like a miniature version of the Pasubio ossuary, though the ossuary was leveled with the remains removed to the mammoth Redipuglia ossuary in 1938, an ossuary containing the remains of over 100,000 soldiers.
Several other ossuaries can be found in churches not far from the battlefield hospitals.
ENTER MUSSOLINI
Most Italian remains by 1927, still lie in cemeteries near the former fronts. Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini was not impressed. A soldier of the Great War himself – he fought above Kobarid on the slopes north of Krn with the 11th Bersaglieri Regiment – Mussolini wanted a grander scale of commemoration for the dead than a simple cemetery. General Giovanni Faracovi suggested concentrations to new ossuaries built close to early cemeteries and former battlefields. This proved an idea more in line with what Mussolini thought. Faracovi became responsible for creation.
The former battlefield cemeteries were closed and remains congregated in 36 new ossuaries. The remains came from nearly 2,650 cemeteries. Some ossuaries went up in spectacularly scenic locations – Rovereto, Monte Grappa. Some built on land conquered by Italian arms – Redupuglia, Oslavia and here at Caporetto.
Concentration of the dead geographically mirrored the Fascist centralization of political power in the late 1920’s. Previous remembrance of the fallen – cauditi – was the responsibility of families, local councils and veterans’ groups – like at Pasubio. After 1928, monuments and ceremonies for the war dead were subject to state approval.
IL DUCE’S THEME
The reason for concentration was given as practical and economical, but the primary reason was political. Individuality was to lose ground to immortalization and exaltation of the memory of heroes on a State level. The “Presente” listed above the dead refers to the Fascist ritual of roll call. Here, survivors shout “Presente” when the names of Fascists who have died – usually in street fights – were called out. The soldiers have thus become part of the Fascist movement themselves.
Like Oslavia and Redipuglia to the south – much larger ossuaries representing a much larger loss of life along the lower Isonzo – the ossuary here lay set on newly-won territory. A claim laid to the new lands coinciding with the Italianization attempts to mold local populations into one Italy. A thing never well received in this region of the Isonzo.
CAPORETTO
Caporetto was the worst defeat in Italian history to that date. But in defeat comes victory, at least if you ascribe to the Fascist line of thought. For here, as horrific a defeat Caporetto was, a new Italy began its birth. First, though victory in 1918 and later in the triumphs of Mussolini’s Blackshirts in Rome in 1920.
Mussolini was not a sentimentalist. The ossuaries created were sentinelle della patria – watchtowers of the nation. But here at Kobarid, Catholicism was borrowed – as it was at other ossuaries – with the result of the ossuary here transforming into an Italian Calvary. From death comes life – the Catholic passion Fascist style. The approach road up from the town below begins with the Star of Italy and the Cross winding up past the fourteen stations of the Cross before coming to the ossuary.
The site used a small chapel dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua dating to 1696 as its nexus. Standing above the town from the hill of Gradič, three octagonal platforms lie beneath the church. Here, the dead are remembered by name – those who are known. The remains were drawn from cemeteries between Monte Rombon – north by Bovec – to Tolmin.
THE OSSUARY
Sitting under the shadows of Krn and Batognica to the east, 7,014 remains lie here at the Caporetto Ossuary atop Gradič of whom 1,748 are unknown. The unknown soldiers lie collected in six tombs placed on sides of the central stairways. Walking up the stairways, they crisscross as you make your way from one level to the next. This is to emphasize the mystery of the site. Names of the known listed alphabetically along the walls of the three octagonal layers. The only other nod to individuality is to list an individual’s particular awards for bravery whether it be gold, silver or bronze.
The chapel is fairly simple with a fresco of universal judgement at the front and one of an Alpini trying to gain revenge for a fallen comrade by throwing a rock at the enemy below. Christ mystically emblazoned in the sky above.
Outside, behind the church are monuments to gassed victims from Bovec who fell early on the first day of fighting during the Caporetto campaign 24 October 1917.
SOLDIERS NOTED AT CAPORETTO OSSUARY
vittorio varese
Fascist interest was to consume the individual into the common, but listing the names still preserves some of the discrete nature of the men buried here in the walls of the ossuary.
Maybe the most famous is Captain Vittorio Varese. He grew up in the central eastern area of the Piedmont between Torino and Milano. Coming out of the Modena Military Academy as an Alpini, he worked his way up in rank to command the 35th Company of the Susa Alpini Battalion.
On the night of 16 June 1915, he led a column from the north helping another company from the Exilles Battalion to capture the peak of Krn-Monte Nero along with 200 Austro-Hungarian prisoners (mostly Hungarian, in this case).
Varese earned a Gold Medal for Valor for this episode. He won a Silver Medal initially but gained a posthumous update to Gold after the war. Varese would win an additional Bronze Medal later in the year further south on Vodil near Mrzli vrh 24 October. At the last action, knowing of an Austrian attack coming, he left the hospital with a fever to return and guide his men in repelling the attack. Beating off the Austrians, Varese returned to the hospital dying a few weeks later 30 November.
many others
On the walls of the Caporetto Ossuary there is at least one father and son connection – Lieutenant Colonel Romano Anchisi and his son Emilio. Both gained the Silver Medal with the colonel adding an additional Bronze.
Several men acquired more than on Silver Medal, like Sottotenente Carlo Donde, Maggiore Giovanni Fresco – he won a bronze, as well – and Sergente Pietro Cargnino. Sottotenente Alfredo Parabicoili had three Silver Medals.
Lieutenant Colonel Michele Pericle Negrotto fell during the early attacks on Mrzli vrh – 3 June 1915 – leading a Bersaglieri battalion made up of students who pushed for Italian intervention into the war.
TODAY
The road leading up to the Ossuary at St Anthony’s begins opposite the main square in Kobarid on the north side. The Kobarid Museum is a hundred meters to the east.
On a summer day look up into the sky full of paragliders coming off the nearby peaks, replacing the artillery shells which used to fly here.
The Caporetto Ossuary remains the only ossuary maintained by the government of Italy outside of the country.
sidenote
Benito Mussolini had a very busy on day – 20 September 1938 – he inaugurated the Caporetto Ossuary aftercoming up from the south where he also inaugurated the massive ossuary at Oslavia just outside Gorizia. Not content with that, he laid a foundation stone for a new Fascist office in Gorizia, opened a new underground power station in Doblar south of Tolmin and a new aqueduct in Volče at the base of Mengore hill. A couple days before that, he did the same for the largest ossuary at Redipuglia.
The Slovene antifascist organization TIGR was hoping to use the event in Kobarid as a chance to assassinate the Duce. The plot did not come off, however. Some think the postponement due to British Secret Service putting brakes on the plan due to Mussolini’s involvement with the upcoming Munich Peace Talks going on also then.