just flung down the steep. They dodged flares and star shells. At one
place they went up a chimney that would be far beyond the climbing
powers of any but a very active man. It must have been like storming the
skies. The dead and wounded rolled away often into inaccessible ravines.
Stray skeletons, rags of uniform, fragments of weapons, will add to the
climbing interest of these gaunt masses for many years to come. In this
manner it was that Tofana No. 2 was taken.

Now the Italians are organising this prize, and I saw winding up far
above me on the steep grey slope a multitudinous string of little things
that looked like black ants, each carrying a small bright yellow egg.
They were mules bringing back balks of timber....

But one position held out invincibly; this was the Castelletto, a great
natural fortress of rock standing out at an angle of the mountain
in such a position that it commanded the Italian communications (the
Dolomite road) in the valley below, and rendered all their positions
uncomfortable and insecure. This obnoxious post was practically
inaccessible either from above or below, and it barred the Italians
even from looking into the Val Travenanzes which it defended. It was, in
fact, an impregnable position, and against it was pitted the invincible
5th Group of the Alpini. It was the old problem of the irresistible
force in conflict with the immovable object. And the outcome has been
the biggest military mine in all history.

The business began in January, 1916, with surveys of the rock in
question. The work of surveying for excavations, never a very simple
one, becomes much more difficult when the site is occupied by hostile
persons with machine guns. In March, as the winter's snows abated, the
boring machinery began to arrive, by mule as far as possible and then by