Melting glacier in Italy reveals corpses of First World War Soldiers

[CougarKing]

From the UK's TELEGRAPH newspaper:

At first glance Peio is a small alpine ski resort like many others in northern Italy. In winter it is popular with middle-class Italians as well as, increasingly, Russian tourists. In summer there’s good hiking in the Stelvio National Park. It has a spa, shops that sell a dozen different kinds of grappa, and, perhaps, aspirations to be the next Cortina. A cable car was inaugurated three years ago, and a multi-storey car park is under construction.

But in Peio, reminders of the region’s past are never far away. Stroll up through the village and, passing the tiny First World War museum on your left, you come to the 15th-century San Rocco church with its Austro-Hungarian cemetery and sign requesting massimo rispetto. Here, one sunny day last September, 500 people attended the funeral of two soldiers who fell in battle in May 1918.

In Peio, you feel, the First World War never quite ended. And in one very real sense, it lives on, thanks to the preserving properties of ice. For Peio was once the highest village in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and had a ringside seat to a little-known but spectacular episode of that conflict called the White War.

(...)- SNIPPED

 

 

[pbi]

A largely forgotten part of WWI: we tend to fixate on Flanders and forget that major battles happened here between the Austro-Hungarians/Germans and Italians. Caporetto was one of them. It was in this Alpine fighting that Rommel cut his teeth: some of his experiences appear in his book "Infantry Attacks".

 

[Ignatius J. Reilly]

Thanks for posting that article, very interesting indeed.