circa 1914: A group of Alpine Infantry soldiers camped at the foot of Mount Vilau in the Italian Alps during World War I. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
As we remember the centenaries of World War One it is understandable that we are most familiar about the Western Front. After all it was our grandfathers and great-grandfathers who fought at the Somme and Passchendaele. We also hear about our English-speaking cousins and their sacrifices at Gallipoli or Vimy Ridge. Perhaps that’s the reason we see so little about centenary commemorations from other fronts: whether at Tannenberg, Galicia, the Carpathians or countless other battlefields. We also hear next to nothing about the southern front, which pitted Italy against Austro-Hungary and was just as bloody as anywhere else, but took place in the Alps. To this day it is the biggest ever conflict in mountains in the history of mankind with over one million casualties.
