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British Army Italy
1917 - 1918
Featuring battles of Asiago Piave Caporetto
and military commanders such as Rommel, Plumer,
Cavan, Cadorna,
Diaz and Conrad von Hotzendorf.
Last up-dated 20 April 2010
Please note that this website will,
at long last, be simplified and brought up to date - soon!
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Introduction
The aim of this site is to describe some aspects of British military
activity during the Great War, mainly the deployment, training and operations
of the BEF (Italy). In time there will also
be information about the Italian Campaign in general, such as
Austro-Hungarian, French, German, Italian and United States forces, and those
of smaller nations, serving in that theatre; their deployment, logistics,
training, battles, medical and leisure facilities, and cemeteries. There will
also be some information on naval operations in the Adriatic, both in the
north (the Gulfs of Venice and Trieste) and
further south in the Otranto Channel, which was a used to supply Italian and
Serbian forces in and around Albania,
and Allied forces in Salonika.
The Italian Campaign is one of the least-known elements of the Great War.
However, the numbers of troops involved, the scale of the main battles and
their casualty lists, equalled many on the Western and Eastern Fronts. Also,
the nature of the battlegrounds, ranging from coastal swamps to 12,000-foot
high snowfields, created conditions unique in the Western Front, and were
matched only by some operational zones in the Caucasus and Mesopotamia.
Finally, the balance of power in the west, if not the outcome of the war,
might have been altered by events on the Italian Front, not just once, but
twice, as will be described.
The site will make extensive use of contemporary photographs and other
printed material, and of maps, Italian, British and Austro-Hungarian.
There are now
no plans to add a Discussion Forum
in the near future, due to lack of time on the part of the operator. Some day, perhaps!
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In recent years there has been trickle of English
language books about the Italian Campaign (and a flood of Italian ones!)
The nations of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire are beginning to
acknowledge the sacrifices of their troops and people in those terrible
years, and register that in print and in the recovery of archives and
photographs from store houses and lofts.
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