The Great war stopped by the furthest bulwark of the Piave Vecchia, in his difficult concluding phase. From the 9th of November 1917, when the italian artificers bursted the railway bridges and the road bridges on the Piave river in order to stop the overwhelming Austro-Hungarian armies advance, untill the 2nd of july 1918, when the victorious final advance began, on the "quiet River" took place one of the most tragic pages of history of the entire century.
Between the 15th of June 1918 and the 2nd of July, in the terrible conflict known as "The Solstice Battle" , the Austrians crossed the Piave river, but the Italian defense stopped and chased away them beyond the swollen River with an heavy loss.

A generation of Bosnian, Italian and Austrian farm workers, peasants and shepherd was destroyed by the fire of guns and granades on the broken banks of the River, by the riverside and in the marshlands flooded again of the Basso Piave.
The Piave Vecchia became, thus, the grave of an entire army, swallowing tons and tons of military hardware and thousands of bodies .
Just in the War Cemetery of Caposile they were more than 10 thousand, but even today, excavating an old river bank or ploughing a field, happens that the unlucky bodies of unknown soldiers that the River stills keeping could emerge.

Text and photos: curtesy of the publishing, from the book 'Escursioni LAGUNA NORD VENEZIA', written by Michele Zanetti, for Itinerari Fuoriporta, Casa Editrice CIERRE Edizioni, Via Ciro Ferrari 5, 37060 - Caselle di Sommacampagna (VR)
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