Cemeteries - Written in the landscape

The war at high altitude required considerable logistical and material effort for the care of the wounded and sick. In the high mountains there were only first aid structures, while intermediate structures, more spacious and organized, were located in the valley floor. For the most serious cases, transfer to military hospitals in territories even farther away from the front was organized. In addition to historical photographs, there remain recollections of the health infrastructure and biographies of doctors who worked at the front or who visited it.
For many, religiosity played an important role in making the harshness of war bearable. The private one, of the individual soldiers, can be reconstructed with extreme difficulty through some objects or personal diaries. The rites of official religiosity, on the other hand, are well documented by photographs, drawings and written sources. These sources show that religiosity itself was often exploited for propaganda purposes and to support the war effort. Parish priests and chaplains, such as Feldkurat Josef Hosp on the Austrian side and Don Pietro Zangrando on the Italian side, supported with conviction the causes of their respective staffs, to the extent that they intervened at times: on the front, faith and patriotism were closely intertwined.
The general staff prepared numerous cemeteries for the fallen. At high altitude, there were emergency cemeteries, in some cases located near the front lines. Time has left barely visible traces of these places. On the Austro-Hungarian front, the cemetery of Toblingerdörfl and that of Zirbenboden are known, both well documented by photographs of the time. Between the two wars, the remains of the soldiers were exhumed and moved to the large cemeteries dedicated to the fallen, in ossuaries or in village tombs, partly for ideological and political reasons. (GF, SK)

The landscape that characterizes the area on which the research of the Written on the Landscape project focused is the Dolomite medium and high mountains, upon which military structures and infrastructures were grafted. From a naturalistic point of view, a monographic report of the Italian I Army Corps of 1917 proves to be particularly revealing, in which we read: “The region in question is part of the Dolomite Alps, of which it forms the extreme eastern edge, and, in this region, the characters of the Triassic formation are very marked, with local tectonic disturbances […]. The phenomena of erosion have acted intensely on dolomite, a constituent element of these rocks, so as to form irregular and steep slopes, furrowed by deep gullies. The typical example of the intensity of this erosion is given by the Tre Cime di Lavaredo; and where erosion has manifested itself most, shales and sandstones have been laid bare.”
The report is very detailed and also focuses on the intricate situation of water: “From the orographic complexity of the region results, by natural consequence, a corresponding hydrographic complexity, and it is noteworthy that in a relatively small area there are watercourses unfolding in different and opposite directions. Thus, while the Rio Marzon, the Rio Cengia and the Rio Giralba all have the general north-south direction, the Bacher Bach goes from south to north; and while the Boden Bach runs from west to east, the Schwarze Rienz [Rienza Nera] descends from east to west.” This is followed by climatic considerations, in which the minimum winter temperatures that have been recorded can drop to -30° C, and insights on the vegetation, ranging from coniferous forest, to mountain forest, to rhododendron.1Archivio dell’Ufficio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, Roma, Monografie del I Corpo d’Armata – Genio – Sistemazione difensiva, AUSSME_B1_110D_23A.
A complex natural landscape, therefore, that did not make life at high altitude easy for the hundreds of men who faced each other for twenty-nine months, summer and winter, in the Dolomites. (GF)

For the soldiers who found themselves fighting on the Three Peaks Plateau, winters were long and snowy. The snow fell from October to April and could last until late June in the shaded areas of the highest peaks. The minimum temperature often dropped to -30°C at night, hovering around 0°C during the day.
Frostbite and avalanches soon became familiar dangers. To help the soldiers survive in such conditions, both staffs provided detailed equipment and instructions. Each Italian soldier, for example, received two sets of woolen garments and three heavy blankets. The troops in the trenches also received coats and shoes lined with fur, clogs, balaclavas, leg wraps, socks, waterproof clothing and sleeping bags. To avoid frostbite, antioxidant fat was distributed to spread on the feet. To limit the damage caused by avalanches, officers from both armies had maps at their disposal showing the points most likely to cause snow loss. Despite this, the winter at high altitude resulted in hundreds of victims.
As time went on, the general staffs began to take advantage of winter conditions. The attack on Sasso di Sesto/Sextenstein on 21 April 1917 is a clear example of this. The approach of members of the Austro-Hungarian army to the Italian lines took place through a tunnel dug hundreds of meters in the snow. This tunnel made it possible to catch the sentinels by surprise and temporarily conquer the position. It also required the training of departments specialized in the use of winter equipment, including skis used for stealth and surprise attacks as well as sleds for the transport of materials. (GF)

Cemeteries and graves on the front line

Immediately after the beginning of the war, tombs and cemeteries had to be built on the Three Peaks front for the fallen soldiers. Today almost no remaining traces of these burial sites, since many of them were abandoned after the war and the remains of the soldiers were reburied in other military cemeteries in the area. A guidebook of the Sesto/Sexten Dolomites from 1929 mentions an abandoned military cemetery, fenced in on a green slope by the river, near the Forcella Lavina Bianca on the Lastron degli Scarperi/Weißlahn auf der Schusterplatte.1Langl and Folta, Sextner Dolomiten, p. 335. In a newspaper article about an excursion of two tourists who ventured into the former front area in 1919, the two tourists tell of the sad sight of countless Italian tombs on the climb to the Forcella Pian di Cengia/Büllelejoch; they also notice a mass grave nearby, with a monument and a large cross planted with heather and other alpine flowers, from which they speculate that the site was dedicated to the victims of an avalanche.2Singer, Emanuel von, Friede in den Bergen.
Today, these written sources are among the few surviving pieces of information on where graves were set up for soldiers at the front during the war, although a few photographs, including those from the Toblingerdörfl military cemetery, can indicate their exact location. Military sources, on the other hand, give us little information about the cemeteries and graves at the front. On February 26, 1916 the cemetery of the same name was solemnly inaugurated by the field curate Hosp at the auxiliary site of Zirbenboden, but soldiers had already been buried there, such as the pioneer Gruber, killed by a rock avalanche in January 1916 during the construction of the handwinch for the Torre di Tobin/Toblinger Knoten.3Kriegsarchiv Wien, Kriegstagebuch des Infanterieregiments 59, Entries vom 13.1.1916, S. 141, 14.1.1916, 142 and 26.2.1916, 173.
Often simple wooden crosses were enough to mark the graves at the front, but there were also attempts to make them more permanent. The Viennese lawyer Rudolf Granichstaedten-Czerva, who was also involved in various aid campaigns for the refugees of Sesto/Sexten, wanted to install iron crosses to the Standschützen who had fallen on the Sesto/Sexten front to replace the less resistant wooden crosses.4Tiroler Landesarchiv, Standschützen Baon Innsbruck I 1914-1918, Faszikel 1, K.u.k. Rayonskommando V, Feldpost 601, 24. Juni 1916.

(SK)

Kriegsarchiv Wien, Kriegstagebuch des Infanterieregiments 59, Entries vom 13.1.1916, 141, 14.1.1916, S. 142 und 26.2.1916, 173.

Langl, Otto and Karl Folta (1929). Sextner Dolomiten. In Ludwig Purtscheller and Heinrich Hess (eds.), Der Hochtourist in den Ostalpen (Meyers Reisebücher 7). Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut A.G., 335.

Tiroler Landesarchiv, Standschützen Baon Innsbruck I 1914-1918, Faszikel 1, K.u.k. Rayonskommando V, Feldpost 601, 24 June 1916.

von Singer, Emanuel (1919). Friede in den Bergen. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 13 October.

Military cemeteries in Sesto

The need to bury the dead soldiers at the front, a few kilometers away from the lines, required the timely construction of military cemeteries at the beginning of the war in Sesto/Sexten. The military cemetery of Anderter, in the hamlet of San Giuseppe/Außerbaurschaft, has taken on the typical appearance of a cemetery in the woods, thus becoming a memorial and a place of remembrance in the post-war period. In the register of the dead of the Municipality of Sesto/Sexten an attempt has been made to reconstruct the names, origin, regiment and date of death of soldiers and individual Russian prisoners of war, although there are also listed some anonymous graves. In the twenties, in the military cemeteries of Sesto/Sexten and Bagni di Moso/Bad Moos numerous bodies of Italian and Austrian soldiers from the Three Peaks Plateau and the surrounding combat sectors were deposited. This time the records in the book of deaths of fallen Italians, added under subsequent Italian rule, bear the words “fallen for the homeland” in Italian.5Südtiroler Landesarchiv, Kirchenbücher Sexten, Sterbebuch 1883 – 1923, Verzeichnis der Bursetzen auf dem Soldatenfriedhof Sexten-Schmieden, p. 158.

(SK)

Holzer, Rudolf (2002). Sexten: Vom Bergbauerndorf Zur Tourismusgemeinde. Sesto/Sexten: Tappeiner Verlag.

Südtiroler Landesarchiv, Kirchenbücher Sexten, Sterbebuch 1883 – 1923, Verzeichnis der Bursetzen auf dem Soldatenfriedhof Bad Moos und Soldatenfriedhof Sexten-Schmieden.

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