in a great ring of
fortified heights protecting the pass and the highway and railroad
running through an angle of the Julian Alps into the heart of Austria.
The forts of Malborghetto projected into Italian territory and its
chief works, Fort Hensel, a great white oblong of armored concrete,
was visible miles away in the Italian mountains. Against this system
of fortifications the Italians brought their heaviest howitzers and
demonstrated, as satisfactorily as the Germans had shown months
earlier at Liege, that the strongest forts were no match for modern
artillery. Fort Hensel and the other permanent forts were shattered
and the ground around them was pitted with great craters from
explosions of the 12-inch shells.

The final ruin of Fort Hensel was accomplished by a shell which
penetrated through the thickest of its steel and concrete layers and
exploded in its ammunition magazine. This bombardment of Malborghetto
necessitated firing mortar shells at a high angle completely over
mountains which hid the target from the Italian gunners. The work of
destruction was slow owing to the fact that mists often curtained the
mountain tops and forced the gunners to cease operations, because to
fire while the observers were unable to watch every shot and telephone
the results would have been only a waste of ammunition.

But the Austrians already knew that their forts were no match for
12-inch howitzers, once these great guns could get into position, and
they had prepared another method of defense which they put into use as
soon as the forts were destroyed. Batteries of Skodas, hidden in a
stretch of pasture land below the summit of the mountain, were brought
up and placed in pits concealed by tufts of grass and brush from
reconnoitering airmen, while at a safe distance dummy guns were
displayed to draw the Italians' fire. Thus one of the greatest
artillery duels of the whole front continued day after day, neither
side being able to see the enemy and relying for information upon
observers posted on mountain tops and in aeroplanes. These 12-inch
guns were not intended for such work. They had been laboriously hauled
to their lofty emplacements five and six thousand feet above sea level
to destroy 6-inch batteries, as these 6-inch guns had been brought up
to overpower the lighter 3-inch mountain guns, some of which the
Italians worked from peaks as high as 10,000 feet. When both sides got
these monster howitzers into position the n