The Cordova daily times., 1916-07-01
DESCR|PT T|ON IF FIGHTS ABOVE
 THE CLOUDS

HEADQUARTERS OF THE TEAL ! IAN ARMY, June 20. - Correspond ] ence of the Associated Pres) Ada mello. which Virgil crowned king of the Italian Alps" is the most 3!oyateI spot in the world where war has eyer been waged.
 Through the courtesy of the Italian general staff, which is desirous that the world outside should know the hardshps of the unprecedented cam paign, the correspondent of the Asso- ciated Press was the first civilian al lowed to witness the fighting on this colossal mountain, which is 1t.506 feet high and covered with eternal snows.
 The correspondent saw the noun
 tain swarming with thousands of
 white clad Alpine soldiers singing,
 alert, eager, crossing glaciers, chal- lenging avalanches. charging the enc
 my with fixed bayonets all above the clouds.
 There the correspondent witnessed
 the action of heavy artillery, a bat
 tery of which fired from the highest
 point in the world where artillery
 had ever been placed or from which it had even been fired. It seemed all most a miracle that such big guns
 could have been transported in two months of hard labor from a distance of fifteen miles in one of the valleys below Over two hundred men had been required for the dragging of a single one of the pieces, and at one stage of the work an avalanche had swooped down from the mountain sides and swallowed up the cannon and devoured forty of the men.
 The professional mountain climber never attempted to reach the top of IAdamello. but in summer the view of the surrounding Alps with Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau and Monte Rosa in the distance is considered the best in Flu rope. Winter and summer, the fight ing there is under conditions that pre- vail only in the Arctic regions. There Austrians and Italians meet in silent death grip, their deaths and their deeds all but unrecorded save in dry army annals, given but brief line in the terse bulletins of General Cad Idorna.
 While the Austrian and Italian can non rumbled lazily, exchanging rude courtesies, or seeking to dislodge avalanches to better destroy and ham, per the enemy, awakening echoes that leaped from dozens of miles up and down the abrupt peaks, the genial Italian colonelaccompanying the cor respondent remarked that in no other war had such fighting ever been, that neither the armies of Hannibal nor Caesar nor Napoleon ever dared en- gage in such work, that their armies, which did go over the mountains not half the height, were hardly larger than a regiment of Alpine troops as today organized, that above all they did not winter in the mountains nor deal with heavy artillery, nor drag up to these fastnesses pound by pound, plank by plank, piece by piece, their food, their supplies, and the guns and ammunition.
 These conditions are not limited to the Adamello region, but repeat them selves on two-thirds of the Italian front, or over line of 275 miles of mountain chains going from the Swiss frontier down to the banks of the Isonzo river, from which can be seen the bitter" blue of the Adriatic, as the poet d'AnnunZlo described II. .' Along this line titanic struggles take place daily of which the outside world never hears. It took five days for the correspondent to slowly climb the Adamello crest, and in this period the Italians succeeded in blowing off 2 tba toD 0e o,Dthar p,ountaip called Coldl Lana, which suddenly burst into the air with it's defenders, who were on their side trying to explode a mine which would blow to pieces the Italian troops. II
 One of the curious facts connected 1 with this mountain front is that mo- { where have the song birds deserted it. l