Objects left behind on the last day of World War and literally frozen in time in an underground cave shelter high in the Alps are now being explored by archaeologists.
The artificially barracked cave was built by a small contingent of Austro-Hungarian troops in the summer of 1915. They had taken this vertiginous point on top of Mount Scorluzzo more than 10,000 feet above sea level to wrest control of the strategically essential Stelvio Pass on the border between Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Italy had failed to garrison the pass so Imperial troops took it unopposed in June and quickly set to fortifying their position.
Despite several attempts by Italian forces to retake Mount Scorluzzo during the course of the war, Austria held it until the end. The Mount Scorluzzino cave shelter was part of a network of concrete, stone and wood defenses built by the Austro-Hungarian army. They dug out the cave at right angles to the slope of the mountain and built a trench leading to an observatory over the pass. The shelter had a stove, a dormitory that slept about 20 and a room with a cot and a stool behind a wood panel that served as the commander’s quarters. The shelter was abandoned after the Armistice of Villa Giusti ended the war between Austria-Hungary and the Allied powers on November 3rd, 1918.
The winter snows over the next few years sealed it in, making the cave inaccessible to all but a handful of highly motivated relic hunters. Water penetrated the deepest part of the shelter, freezing and preserving the contents for a century.
Climate change began to melt the surface of the thick glacial ice, and the first wood structures of the barracks of the larger Scorluzzo shelter near the cave were spotted in 2015. The rapidly retreating glacier made it possible for archaeologists to excavate Scorluzzo, and from 2017 to 2019, more than 300 objects — uniforms, munitions, lanterns, documents, personal belongings — were recovered. In 2020, the entire structure was dismantled timber by timber and moved by helicopter to Bormio where it would be reconstructed in a museum.
The Scorluzzino cave shelter, however, has only begun to be thoroughly documented and excavated, and it is shedding new light on the little known details of the White War (the Alpine front during World War I).
We now know that the Austro-Hungarian army, so far from the sea, used straw-filled sacks not with straw but with algae, well-suited for their antiseptic properties. An impressive logistical chain that started in Istria and reached an altitude of 2,995 meters. Even where La Guerra Bianca (The White War, in the Alps) made military presence sparser, Italian propaganda dropped irredentist newspapers in the trenches. The ice has preserved newspaper pages, notes, and correspondence. There are chargers for repeating weapons, standard-issue shovels, nails to hang cartridge pouches, and the pouches themselves. Food tins scraped clean due to hunger, with apricot kernels split to eat the contents, a clear sign of starvation. All this in the 12 meters of depth carved into the rock, three meters wide and about two meters high, entirely lined with carefully crafted Val Venosta wood that still proudly fulfills its function, albeit compromised in some places after years.
This video (in Italian with English subtitles) gives a guided tour of this icy time capsule.
And not a single picture? Please don’t publish this blog anymore. It is garbage.
Doesn’t a long video count ?
Watch the video. To help you out, a video consists of moving pictures.
They literally linked an entire video. Please don’t post anymore. You’re garbage.
Jimeny only reads books with pictures
Honestly, this doesn’t sound like all that bad a posting. Cold and lonely, yes, but probably a lot better than life in the trenches (or, for the Austrians specifically, the disastrous eastern front).
That helmet almost looked like world war II I know because I have a double decal alghamine SS helmet that was taken off the battlefield many many moons ago at the end of world war II I got it off of a vet our vet I like war history and memorabilian stuff from different areas
It WW1 helmet. They look slightly similar.
A few WWI helmets may have been used in WWII butore likely in areas like Finland and China.
WW2 helmets patterned after WW1. Looks Austrian to me.
Those boys were better living in the mountains. Every peasant knows that we can eat apricot pits as a last resort. It works better if you leach them to wash out the cyanide.
War. What a waste. Retired Army Ranger
War is a crime of failed politics and we paid the price –
Retired US Marine
enjoyable article, in conjunction with the video very informative thanks
I’m glad the kaiser was stopped. I like speaking English rather than German. I’m glad half our country was not sold to the Germans through Mexico. If they come back will you fight for your country and peace or will you roll over get captured tortured killed. I don’t want to waste your time though.
So interesting. Thank you.
My Grandfather who was from Abruzzi fought for the Italian Army during World War 1. Even though he had already immigrated to the United States be went back and forth between Italy and the U.S. several times before the outbreak of war and was drafted into the Italian Army. He fought against Austrian soldiers in the Alps in and around the Stelvio Pass. What he most remembered was the cold, the lack of food as well of the futility of trying to dislodge Austrian artillery which rain down on them.
At times they were forced to eat rats to survive.
My grandfather was also from Abruzzi and faught in Africa in world war 1.
Interesting but the end talks of signs of starvation. What was the end they all got out hungry.
You can die of starvation, but you can also survive starvation.
I don’t comment much, but I read everything you post. Thank you for your wonderful efforts throughout the year, and I hope 2024 is a great one for you! Cheers!
“apricot kernels split to eat the contents, a clear sign of starvation.”
Desperation maybe but not starvation.
War is the ignorance of political and military expectations and not taking into account the possible result of failure. Also failure in understanding the opponents resolve will end in disaster. The south lost the Civil War when they fired on Fort Sumter. Germany lost
World War 2 by invading Russia. Japan lost it’s war when they attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States lost the war in Vietnam by inept political interference by not realizing the North Vietnamese resolve. War is the tragic waste of humanity, civilizations and property.
You are completely correct. We should only go to war, enter into full and sustained combat, when every other option and all forms of diplomacy have failed. Only when we have no other viable option or choice, should we or anyone go in this direction. War means that people, good people as well as the bad . . . . will, not probably, but WILL – die; and often needlessly. It is an admission of failure to peacefully reconcile our collective differences of personal opinion, political will, national identity, our greed, and the deep – nearly unending and unchecked, lust for control over resources, money, and people’s lives. Like tomcats fighting in the neighborhood streets over the need to control territory that does not belong to them in the first place and never will, over food – more or less – that they fear not having access to, over females because they’re instinctually driven to do so, and often sheer stupidity because they are cats with limited intellect to begin with. If humans would pay attention, they would realize that their lives, and their short-lived intentions for the most part, are finite; in the same way that the lives of their pets – – the tomcats are also. We, like our pets, will eventually die. And all that we had hoped to obtain and gain, like our pets , will die as well. And so for us, like our cats, the question is: What will it matter? And further, what does it matter?
Don’t forget, even if they live now, our so-called enemies, and all that they wanted and entered into war over – – will ALSO die away into nothingness. Humans in the future, will read and learn about our history, and will wonder out loud – – what did all of that conflict actually get them ??
We, likewise, do the same when we read about those who came before us, of their histories and conflicts. We too, read about them, and also ask – – what the hell was that all about and did they gain anything out of it all in the first place?? If we were immortal earthlings, perhaps it all might be worth fighting over. But we are not.
The Italian Front is often overshadowed by the Western Front, but the conditions that the Italian and the Austro-Hungarian armies had to endure was equal to, and maybe even worse, than the conditions on the Western Front.