The blow of the 3rd Lancer Division to the flank and rear of the Italians caused confusion throughout the Italian line, and now they were blocking the route of the retreat of the Italians and were sure to receive a strong impact.

Rakovsky's 7th Company spent half a day digging two long trenches at the edge of the woods outside the town. Before dusk, the soldiers were huddled under the pine trees to take shelter from the rain, and the rain still poured down the branches to their necks, and they were already soaked and shivering from the cold.

But no one wanted to go into the trenches, and the trenches outside the woods, which were more than a man deep, had accumulated more than 20 centimeters of water, and there was sludge everywhere. The soldiers huddled under the trees, smoking cigarettes, chatting listlessly, waiting for the enemy to attack. Sergeant Valucci sat on a wooden pier and was telling the story of how a Russian colonel had been captured alive in Galicia, when in the middle of the sentence the officers' whistles suddenly sounded.

"The enemy is coming soon, hurry up and get into position!" The platoon commander ran from not far away, shouting loudly.

So the Galician soldiers jumped up, took greedy puffs with the remaining cigarette butts in their hands, then dragged their rifles, ran to the trenches, and slid down. The sewage splattered, followed by the sound of clattering and waving through the sewage, and they ascended to the pre-dug battle positions.

It's past 5 p.m., and it's very dark because of the light rain. The sound of gunfire from the north was already approaching the position of the 3rd Lancer Division.

While Rakovsky was trying to dig a hole in the trench wall with a sapper shovel, Michuk, a tall machine gunner, was putting an Israya M1915 heavy machine gun into the firing position, and then retreated from it, wiping the rain from his face while complaining to Rakovsky: "Damn, this damn thing weighs half a ton, if only I had a rifle like you." ”

"It's okay, this thing is only 13 kilograms, if it's quite Makqin, then it's worth your complaint." Rakovsky took out half a box of crumpled cigarettes wrapped in oiled paper from his pocket, took two out of them, handed one to Michuk, then put the other one to his mouth, and said: "Is there a match?" Mine was soaked. ”

"It seems that I am more careful than you, if I squat here without a cigarette and wait for the enemy to come up, I can kill people." Michuk chuckled as he took out a match from his arms and used his body to block the rain, and the two lit cigarettes, "Hey, don't be so nervous, it's too early for the Italians to attack." He shouted to Dmytro, a Ukrainian recruit, the secondary shooter lying on his seat.

After a few battles, Rakovsky no longer had the same impulsive feeling he had when he joined the army, and killing was just a job for them, and they no longer felt excited or disgusted. A person's life is worth 100 crowns, which is the reward for killing an enemy.

The sky was getting dark, and a red flare rose in the sky above the north side of the trench, and the people in the trench were noisy, and the purple sparks of the flare had not disappeared from the sky, and the Italians had already opened fire.

Rumble! Rumble!

Sou! Sou! …… Shells streaked across the sky with a piercing screech, swept overhead, and then exploded near the position. Boom, the earth is shaking. The chance of a shell falling into the trench was slim, but not impossible, as a shell fell not far from the anti-artillery hole where Rakovsky and the others were staying, and a large chunk of the trench collapsed, and three people were blown to pieces and flew up, and then pieces of flesh and internal organs were scattered all over the ground.

The Ukrainian recruits wanted to vomit, but they were slapped by Michuk and made their heads dizzy, and instead forgot about their nausea.

As the artillery fire gradually stopped, Rakovsky, who was on guard, saw in the faint light that about 200 meters from the position, the Italian soldiers were crawling like lizards underground, wriggling towards their positions under the cover of grass or bushes. Their figures clinged to the ground, looking for a qiē to hide.

Small ditches, craters, and even slightly raised slopes, they wanted to plunge headlong into the earth.

The crackling of machine guns rang out from the Austro-Hungarian position, and Rakovsky pulled the bolt unhurriedly, and a beech tree as thick as a thigh on the opposite side was interrupted by Michuk's machine gun. The attacking Italians were finally unable to support themselves under the blows of the machine guns, and they all began to crawl back, leaving a smooth mark on the wet mud behind them. Some people couldn't help jumping up and wanted to run away, but without exception, they were knocked to the ground by the dense rain of bullets. Dense bullets raged through the woods, and the sawdust from the trees flew everywhere, then broke and fell.

Rakovsky had just finished firing a magazine, and the first attack of the Italians was repulsed, which could be regarded as a hurry.

Michuk shook his head, the Italians had begun to retreat even from 150 meters away, and his shots seemed to have no success.

Artillery and machine guns roared throughout the night in all areas - the Italians attacked along the entire front, trying to force their way through the area guarded by the 3rd Lancer Division of Guò and flee. The Austrians counterattacked with heavy firepower, and without shouting for killing, the Italian army, which was already not strong-willed, was even more shaken, and before the early hours of the morning, when the Austro-Hungarian 20th Army behind them caught up, they collapsed completely.

To Bolojević's surprise and all the German-Austrian generals who commanded the operations in South Tyrol, the breakthrough of the 20th Army, which was responsible for the first wave of assault, was so easy. They encountered very little resistance from the Italians, and the Italians began to retreat when they met an attack on the flank.

The 20th Army was left uninhabited, and only three days after the start of the campaign, it reached the city of Vicenza, where it encountered some decent counterattacks.

They advanced so fast that the main forces of the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army and the German 9th Army behind them had to run to catch up with them, while the 6th Army easily broke through the Adige River defenses, which were defended by only two divisions of the Italians, and easily captured Verona.

The German-Austrian forces continued to advance and surrounded Padua.

The rear route of the main force of the Italian army was cut off, causing the collapse of the entire front.

The Austro-Hungarian 8th and German 12th Armies, which were counterattacking in the Isonzo region, barely fought, and the only thing they did was to chase the fleeing Italian troops through the mountains and capture them.

In just nine days, the Austro-Hungarian army was overwhelmed, the Austrian vanguard 20th Army captured Bologna, an important city in central Italy, while the 6th Army occupied Parma, and now the 3rd Army was at the end, and they had to contain nearly 600,000 Italian prisoners.

The course of the entire campaign in northern Italy shocked Admiral Borojevich, who was chief of the General Staff of the front, and he wrote in his diary: "As a junior, I should not have doubted the merits of my predecessor, Field Marshal Radetzky, who had won a great victory over the Italian army, but it was not too difficult to attack the Italians with the main forces of the Empire, and the marshal's appointment as chief of staff to Prince Schwarzenberg at the Battle of Leipzig was the culmination of his brilliant and long military career." ”

The implication is that there are some regrets that we have not won the war.

The course of the Battle of Northern Italy made Lechelton's carefully planned landing in Verona a problem, and while the 7th Army was still slowly landing on the beach east of Verona, the 1st Marine Corps, which had already landed, had already captured the port of Ancona, along with the 20th and 14th armies in the Austro-Hungarian front.

Lechelton had no choice but to adjust the battle plan and transport the 7th Army to the port of Ancona and go ashore directly.

The Italian army, whose main forces had been wiped out, had become defenseless.

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