ery at that portion of the line against which the attack
was being prepared was quickly and strongly reinforced.
French and British machine guns were rushed to the front until a
perfect wall of heavy and light guns was in position. Then there came
a short interval of silence and waiting, almost oppressive. Suddenly
the stillness was broken by a tremendous burst of shells from the
Turkish guns, and for a time shrapnel poured down on the French front.
But the men were safely positioned in dugouts and little loss
resulted. From the strait loud booming began. The battered Goeben was
at work again, and during the bombardment she pounded our right with
some forty 11-inch shells. Many did not burst--they were apparently of
Turkish manufacture.
This hail of shells lasted just an hour and a half and was the
severest bombardment to which our lines have been subjected during the
weeks of struggle on the peninsula. No sooner had the heavy fire
ceased than great solid masses of Turks leaped forward to the attack.
On they came, the silence unbroken save for their shouts, until they
reached a point within sixty or seventy yards of the French position.
Then from 200 well placed machine guns a devastating answering fire
burst from our Allies' trenches, and the rifles joined in, 20,000 of
them. The big guns flared and cast a lurid light over the scene.
Italy's War on Austria
Second Month Closes with Offensive Operations in Swing Against Gorizia
On July 23, after two months of her war against Austria, an
appraisement may be taken of Italy's extensive and
business-like preparation for the conflict. Rapidly the
passes leading to the Trentino, Carinthia, Friuli, and the
valley of the Isonzo were secured, almost over night; and
then, with the regularity of a railway time-table, the
Italians began their hard, patient work, in hitherto
impassable regions, of neutralizing the Trentino, so as to
make impossible an invasion from that territory, and of
linking up their columns along the Isonzo, so that now, at
the beginning of August, a battle-front of seventy-five
miles extending from Tarvis to the Adriatic, is ready to
move eastward in the direction of Klagenfurt, beyond which
there are no Austrian fortifications until Vienna is
reached, 170 miles away--about as far as Cape Cod is from
New York City. The right flank of this battle-front has been
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