“In July I was given command of a battalion occupying a position at the foot of the Col di Lana. Perhaps you saw from the lake as you came up the commanding position of this mountain. If so, you will understand its supreme importance to us, whether for defensive or offensive purposes. Looking straight down the Cordevole Valley toward the plains of Italy, it not only furnished the Austrians an incomparable observation post, but also stood as an effectual barrier against any advance of our own toward the Livinallongo Valley and the important Pordoi Pass. We needed it imperatively for the safety of any line we established in this region, and just as imperatively would we need it when we were ready to push the Austrians back. Since it was just as important for the Austrians to maintain possession of this great natural fortress as it was for us to take it away from them, you will understand how it came about that the struggle for the Col di Lana was perhaps the bitterest that has yet been waged for any one point on the Alpine front. “Early in July, under cover of our guns to the south and east, the Alpini streamed down from the Cima di Falzarego and Sasso di Stria, which they had occupied shortly before, and secured what was at first but a precarious foothold on the stony lower eastern slope of the Col di Lana. Indeed, it was little more than a toe-hold at first; but the never-resting Alpini soon dug themselves in and became firmly established. It was to the command of this battalion of Alpini that I came on July 12, after being given to understand that my work was to be the taking of the Col di Lana regardless of cost. “This was the first time that I--or any other Garibaldi, for that matter (my grandfather, with his ‘Thousand,’ took Sicily from fifty times that number of Bourbon soldiers)--had ever had enough (or even the promise of enough) men to make that ‘regardless of cost’ formula much more than a hollow mockery. But it is not in a Garibaldi to sacrifice men for any object whatever if there is any possible way of avoiding it. The period of indiscriminate frontal attacks had passed even before I left France, and ways were already being devised--mostly mining and better artillery protection--to make assaults less costly. Scientific ‘man-saving,’ in which my country has since made so much progress, was then in its infancy on the Italian front.