Hi everyone, finally the thread wich (surprisingly) many of you asked for. Sorry for the delay, I have been really busy with my job in the last few days. I included some pictures of the monte Cauriol, the mountain where I found almost all the stuff in the pictures (what I found on Piave river, monte Grappa, Montello, Asiago plateau, Costabella, Col di sangue and other locations is not at my disposal right now since I wasn’t alone and other people kept the stuff-what you are going to see is a good sample of what I found also in the other locations, anyway-). As I said in the previous thread I also found some live handgranades, cannon projectiles and human body parts (skull fragments and an Austrian boot with leg and feet inside, both on monte Cauriòl) and, of course, I had to give everything to the military police. I’m providing some informations to contestualize the pictures you will see: monte Cauriòl was one of the strongly fortified Austrian mountains (now located in the Italian region of trentino), italians alpini of the Feltre battalion captured the summit (more or less 2500 m above sea level) after 3 days of furious fighting in the summer of 1916 and, after 4 days of Austrian counterattack (and with every single austrian artillery piece in the region targeting the summit, including a monstrous 305 mm siege mortar located in the village of Ziano), the monte Rosa battalion took the place of the decimated Feltre battalion (3 austrian battalions were pushed back in those 4 days-the first one was an alpenjager battalion, and, since alpine were almost out of ammunition, they fought mostly with rocks and handgranades, accordingly to the historians; the other 2 where an Hungarian and a Slovenian battalion, the latter having been destroyed for error by 2 305 mm Austrian shells-). In next days the alpine managed to conquer the Busa alta (another 2500 m mountain beside the Cauriòl) and the 2300 quote of the Cardinal (another mountain next to Cauriòl, in this battle there were no prisoners among the Austrians, everyone of them fought until death) but Austrians were able to keep the summit of the Cadinal, making impossible for the italians to go to Bolzano and encircle the Austrian army and thus transforming the pretty dynamic warfare of the previous months in a trench warfare wich lasted until the battle of Caporetto, when Italians were forced to leave the hard earned mountains to make a second defensive line further back. The mountain were recaptured only in 1918, when finally Italy definitevely defeated Austrohungarians in the battle of Vittorio Veneto. You will see also some pictures of stuff I had from my grand-grandfather, who fought in almost every war Italy has been involved in during his life: in WW1, at 17 years old, fought on Montello and monte Grappa (escaped from home and joined the army under false age in 1918), where he was a relay runner of a mountain mortars battery and got a shrapnel while in combat (he earned a bronze medal of honor but no one in the family know the exact circumstances) and he met a local girl who was enlisted as nurse, they will marry and their first child is my grandpa; in the invasion of Ethiopia and in WW2, when he was an artillery captain and fought against the british in oriental Africa until he was wounded after he personally took the place of one of his serveant of an artillery piece who had just been killed and started shooting point blank against british tanks, destroying two of them (for this action he earned a silver medal of honor you can see in the pictures below). Due to the lack of airforce and armoured units and due to the extreme advantage of british in those 2 fields, his campaign didn’t last long: his unit fought 3 battles and, at the end, 1/3 of his men were dead, 1/3 where Eritrean ascari which deserted during the first night under his command (note that not every eritrean escaped, almost ¾ of his unit was made up of those guys and more than 10 died in combat) and 1/3 was wounded or captured, he passed 6 years in india as a POW and, once back, he became a colonel and died at 92 years old, with 3 children and a couple projectiles in both legs. I hope this brief introduction wasn’t too boring and I hope my English is good enough to make my points clear (I use English for work pretty often and I watch a lot of movies in English but the war-related terminology couldn’t be accurate). Thank you for the interest you have shown in the previous thread, enjoy the pictures, Simone ??

P.S. I didn’t use a metal detector for those findings, there are too many shrapnels and grenade fragments on those mountains and the detector is always triggered, making you loose a lot of time, the most practical way to find relics there is using bare eyes! Anyway, if you don’t know where too look is not so easy to find interesting stuff and i usually take unused and often dangerous way to look for relics in places where no one have recently been (i am an alpinist and i have proper equipment, my dad took me mountaineering with him since i was 8).

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let's begin with a couple pictures from the moena ww1 museum







now some pictures of my "collection" of findings and family stuff from ww1 and ww2 (take the propaganda stuff with a grain of salt..it was 100 years ago, there slogans were not very "politically correct"  as you will see!)


































Pics from the last hike i took this August


















some pics from 5 years ago, Costabella

Thank you for sharing. Very interesting.

Great pics and history, Thank you very much for sharing!

Your grandfather was Alpini in WWII? If so he and my father may have crossed paths-my father was 10th Mountain Division (85E) and part of the Po River Valley offensive.
He had much respect for the Alpini and really enjoyed going back over there many years later and rubbing elbows with them.

Amazing work OP.  

Brilliant

Thanks

Very cool. Thank you for sharing.

Awesome! Thanks for posting. Talk about mountain fighting, that's a fucking mountain.

This is awesome.  I will share with a friend in Teramo.

He will enjoy it.

Thank you very much for sharing, always nice to see relics from the World War's.

He was captured in the first year of the war in abissinia, he never fought in Italy in WW2! glad to hear that, anyway, with alpini you surely have fun ahah! just try to go to the annual festival of alpini one time..it's crazy! you can't literally go there with your gf cause you will have to fight many times to keep them away ahah!

Outstanding thread.  Thanks for sharing!

Interesting stuff, thanks

Neat stuff

yes, and it wasn't one of the highest, google "marmolada", that was an hell of a place! i have been up there and the fact that they took cannons or machineguns up there is unbelievable!

Awesome post!!  Thanks for sharing as that type of exploration is fascinating.

Thanks for sharing!

Wow!  Thank you is all I can say.  Really outstanding.

Fighting in that terrain must have been hell on the attacker...just crazy.

Awesome pictures and information, op! Thanks for taking the time to do that!

Holy shit. Talk about a rugged place to pick a fight.

Very cool! Thank you for sharing.

This rifle approves of this thread.
Attached File

No kidding!   At some point somebody had to think "why are we fighting for this territory?   Let's get off the rocks and fight somewhere else  ".

i miei familgia de mi papa sono de belluno....non scrivo l'italino bene, scusi

molto grazie per tutti i foti delgli montangni....

che maraviglioso!!!!!

il suo inglese sono benissimo!

(i am 2nd generation italo-american.......1/2 benevento   1/2 belluno....best of both worlds)

That's terrific!

Thank you very much for tanking the time to create this thread. I love all things related to the Great War and I love to read and see all I can about it.

Much respect. Thanks for the post.

Hard to beat good German glass, especially for that time. How are those Goerz binoculars in person?

Outstanding.

Thanks for posting all of those pictures.  It's a part of WWI history that is unfamiliar to most Americans.  I metal detect for Civil War items here in Virginia but what you do in the mountains is seriously hard core relic hunting.  Just be careful with the live artillery shells.  I doesn't look like a practical location to dispense gas but do you know if chemical munitions were ever used in the mountain fighting?

Thank you for this thread OP

thanks! i've been to Belluno a couple times, nice place! in your italian there are grammar errors but it's definitely understandable :)

outstanding, of course!

Outstanding thread, thanks for sharing!

Grazie infinite!!!!!!! Excellent post. Thank you for sharing

Thanks for sharing!

I worked with the Italian Alpine troops several times. Good guys. Grappa, is something else!

Thanks for the pics!

yes, definitely used. one of the most terrible things in the mountain warfare was the tunnel warfare: for example, italians made blow up the summit of col di sangue with the austrians defending it 3 (!!!) times by tunneling under it and placing a huge charge of explosive. Col di sangue means "bloody mountain". it wasn't so rare, either. i know the italian front is not very known overseas and that's too bad, it was an important front: when austrians were defeated at vittorio veneto, Germany was left alone and the war ended in few days.

ahah grappa it's more important than oxygen for alpini, also red wine

Mont Blanc is 15,774 feet (4,808 m), was there fighting here?

At what altitude was most of the fighting at?

oh wow, sorry i confused it with an M95 at first, too many answers to look for and it was pretty late. . Nice rifle, i have a M91 cavalry carbine :)

OST. Pretty cool stuff OP. Thank you for posting!!!

Very cool!

I watched a show about a cannon the Italians lugged up a mountain & pasted the Austrians with it.

Very well done OP.

You certainly delivered.

no fighting on monte bianco because it's at french border, not austrian/slovenian/croatian. In WW2, when Italy invaded France, there was fighting on westerns alps but never on Monte Bianco. In ww1 they fought up to 3600 meters with temperatures as low as -40 celsius degrees, there was a winter with more than 10k death by avalanche. ww1 in Italy and austria is also called "the white war".

wich show was that? it would be nice if i could find it in streaming somewhere in the web!

Well done and thank You. I am envious.
Your command of the English language is very impressive. At least a thousand times better than My non-existent Italian skills!

The Ol' Crew Chief

Awesome thread!

Thanks for posting these. Amazing finds!!

very cool, thanks

So at most 12,000 feet.  Until acclimated, the altitude really slows you down.