The Battle of Hill 383 was a military engagement between the armies of Austria-Hungary and Italy on the Italian front of World War I, lasting from June 1915 to July 1917. The battle took place on a hill later called Mount Prižnica (italian Poggio Montanari), located near the town of Plave in present Slovenia. The Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies clashed for two years in an attempt to occupy it; the bloodiest clash occurred on 17 June 1915 when General Luigi Cadorna wanted to offer king Victor Emmanuel III a conquest which he could witness in person. This "demonstration" caused the death of over 8,000 men who were massacred in a frontal attack against Austrian machine guns. The fighting was continuing for the next two years, until Mount Prižnica was took by Italians during the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo.
Background
After 23 May 1915, when Austro-Hungarian empire declared war on Italy, Italian High Command led by general Luigi Cadrona planned the first offensive actions on the hard mountain terrain on the Austro-Hungarian-Italian border. As one of the targets they chose Austrian-held Poggio Montanari hill on the border aerea with south Austria. To impress the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III, Cadrona invited the monarch for a visit on the front, where he could present him a spectacular Italian victory. Forces chosen for attack were also from 2nd Army Corps commanded by General Gustavo Reisoli.
Battle
On the evening of June 9, 1915, two battalions of the Ravenna Brigade of the 3rd Division crossed the Isonzo river on a pontoon bridge, establishing a bridgehead on the eastern bank, and began the climb up the hill on wooded terrain manned by a single company of 200 Austrian riflemen from the 1st Mountain Brigade of the 18th Infantry Division. The Italian assault was quickly crushed by accurate rifle and machine gun fire, and the assault was postponed until the next day.
On June 10, the Italian artillery began a heavy bombardment of the enemy area; at 9:30 pm after sunset the entire Ravenna Brigade (6 companies) of the 3rd Division composed of 6000 men gave the assault on the hill 383, but the Austro-Hungarian defense, now reenforced and composed of an entire battalion of about 1000 men, Dalmatian soldiers commanded by Major General Guido Novak von Arienti, managed to repel the assault with a counter-assault, which forced the Italian soldiers to break ranks and retreat towards the starting positions on the river bank.
On June 12, the Italians tried to attack again with two battalions to challenge the Austro-Hungarian resistance; the soldiers reached the slopes of the mountain undisturbed and while they were crossing the first line of wire fences, they were surprised on open ground by machine guns and were forced to a hasty retreat towards the river. Having reached the banks of the Isonzo, the Italian soldiers were surprised by an fire support of the Austro-Hungarian armored train brought from Gorizia, which targeted them with its cannons and machine guns; under this crossfire the Italian units left over a thousand dead on the ground.
During an inspection of the front lines by the king, General Cadorna decided to offer him the spectacle of the conquest of altitude 383, so he prepared an observatory set up on Mount Korada at altitude of 800 meters. On June 17 he had 6 regiments of veterans of the "Ravenna" and "Forlì" brigades and of the "La Spezia" special corps brigade transferred beyond the Isonzo, watched by Cadorna, Victor Emmanuel and the other members of Italian General Staff. Cadorna declared to the king, then Italians will take this height at any cost. The following assault on a completely exposed and uphill terrain against the Austrian machine gun nests caused thousands of Italian soldiers found death in relentless actions.
Aftermath
After 4 of the 6 regiments having completely lost in the clash, Cadorna decided to interrupt the assault and contented himself with digging his most advanced line about 300 meters from the Austrian lines. In a few days, officially on 23 June 1915, the First Battle of the Isonzo started, as the first main military acton on the Italian World War I theatre. Battle also de facto opened the so-called White War warfare, where Austro-Hungarians and Italians were fighting in a steep and high-altutude terrain of the Alps and the Dolomites.
The fight for the conquest of Hill 383 and the surrounding territories resumed in the following months of 1915, including the First and the Second Battle of the Isonzo, and also the following clashes on this river line. The Italian army finally managed to occupy the hill only following the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo on 5 July 1917.
