Blinding the Enemy with Searchlights 



While the searchlights, concentrated on the Austrian position, streamed above, the 

 Italian engineers worked below in pitch dark, bridging the chasm between the 

 opposing forces. They had to drop their pontoons down a forty-foot wall on wooden 

 skids, join them, and plank them - over a wildly rushing stream. The Austrians, 

 flooded in noon-day light, could see nothing in the darkness beyond. They suspected 

 a ruse and kept their guns booming but this only covered the noise of bridge building 



858 



