lO 
LAND & WATER 
lebiiuuy y, 1917 
The Soldier who Sings. 
Bv Lewis R. Freeman 
THERE was soincthing just a bit omumur, 111 ihe 
brooding warmtli of tlu- suit iiir that was 
stirring at the base of the towering cHffs of the 
Marmolada where I took the " telcfcrica." and 
the tossing aigrettes of wind-driven snow at Ihe 
lip of the pass where the cable line ended in the lee of a 
rock just under the Italian hrst-linc trenches signalled 
the reasoft whv. The vanguard of one of those irres- 
ponsible mavericks of mountain storms that so delight 
to bustle about and take advantage of the fine weather 
to make surprise attacks on the Alpine sky-line out- 
posts was sneaking o\er from the Austrian side, and 
somewhere up there where the tenuous wire of the tele- 
ferica (as the wire ropeway is called), lined down and 
merged into the amorplious mass of the cliff behind my 
little car was going to lun into it. 
" A good ten minutes to snug-down in, anyhow." 
1 said to mvself. and after the fashion of the South Sea 
skipper who shortens sail and battens down the hatches 
with his weather on the squall loaring down from 
windward. I tucked in the loose ends of the rugs about 
my feet and rolled up the high fur collar of my Alpini coat 
and buttoned the tab across my nose. 
But things were developing faster tlian I liad cal- 
culated. As the little wire basket glided out of the cut 
in the fortv-foot rift that had encroached on its aerial 
right-of-way where the supporting cables cleared a 
jutting crag. I saw that it was not only an open-and- 
above board frontal attack that I had to reckon with, 
but also a craftily planned tfank movement quite in 
keeping with the "fact that the whole affair, lock, stock, 
and barrel, was a " Made in Austria " product. Even 
as I watched one driven shaft of blown snow came into 
position to strike, and straight out over the ice-cap 
covering the brow of a cliff shot a clean-hncd wedge 
of palpable, solid whiteness. 
One instant my face was laved in the moist, warm 
air current drawing uj) from the wooded lower valley 
\\here the warm lingers of the thaw were pressing close 
on the hair- poised triggers of the ready-cocked ava- 
lanches ; the next I was gasping in a blast of Arctic 
frigWity as the points of the blown ice needles tingled 
in my "protesting. lungs with the sting of hastily gulped 
champagne. Through frost-rimmed eye-lashes I had 
just time to see a score of similar shafts leap out and go 
charging down into the bottom of the valley before 
the main front of the storm came roaring along and 
heights and hollows were masked with whishing veils 
of translucent white. In the space of a few seconds an 
amphitheatre of soaring mountain peaks roofed with a 
vault of deep purple sky had resolved itself into a gusty 
gulf of spinning snow blasts. 
My little wire basket swung giddily to one side as the 
first gust drove into it. promptly to swing back again, 
after the manner of a pendulum, when the air buffer was 
undermined by a counter gust and fell away ; but the 
deeply grooved wheel was never near to jumping off 
the supporting cable, and the even throb of the distant 
engine coming down the pulling wire felt like a kindly 
hand-pat of reassurance. 
" (iood old teleferica ! " I said half aloud, raising 
myself on one elbow and looking over the side ; " you're 
as comfy and safe as a ])assenger lift and as thrilling as an 
aeroplane. But " — as the picture of a line of ant-like 
figures I had noted toiling up the snow slope a few 
moments before flashed to my mind — " what happens to 
a man on his feet — a man not being yanked along out 
of trouble by an engine on the end of a nice strong cable — 
\vhen caught in a maelstrom like that ? What must be 
happening to those poor Alpinis ? Whatever can they 
be doing ? " 
And even before the clinging insistence of the warm 
breeze from the lower valley liad checked the impet- 
uosity of the invader, and" diverted him, a cringing 
captive, to baiting avalanches with what was left of 
his strength, I hacl my answer : for it was while the 
ghostly draperies of tlie snow-charged wind gusts still 
masked the icy slope below that, through one of those 
weird tricks ui ai ousUcs .mj common among high niouutain 
peaks, the tlute-like notes of a man singing in a clear 
tenor lioated up to the ears I was just unmuffling : 
Fratelli d' Italia, V Italia s'e dcsta ; 
Dcir clmo di Scipio s'c cinta la testa.* 
It was the Inno di Mameh — the song of 1848, 
the Marseillaise of the Italians. I recognised it instantly 
because, an hour previously, my hosts at luncheon in the 
officers' mess below had been playing it on the gramo- 
phone. Clear and distinct, like freshly minted coins made 
vocal, the stirring words winged up through the pulsing 
air till the " sound chute " by which they had found their 
way was broken up by the milling currents of the dying 
storm. But I knew that the Alpini were still singing— 
that they had been singing all the time, indeed— and 
when the last of the snow flurries was finally lapped up by 
the warm wind, there they were, just as I expected to 
find them, pressing onwards and upwards under thi.'ir 
burdens of soup cans, wine bottles, stove-wood, blankets, 
munition and the thousand and one other things that 
must pass up the life-hne to a body of soldiers holding 
a mountain pass in midwinter. 
* if * if 
This befell, as it chanced, during one of my early days 
on the Alpine Front and the incident— men singing in a 
blizzard almost strong enough to sweep them from their 
feet — made no small impression on me at the moment, 
because it was my first experience of the kind. A week 
later I would have considered it just as astonishing 
to have encountered— under any conditions — an Alpini 
who was not singing ; for to him — to all Itahan soldiers, 
indeed — song furnishes the principal channel of out- 
ward expression for the spirit — and what a spirit it is !^ 
within him. He sings as he works, he sings as he plays, 
he sings as he fights, and — many a tale is told of how this 
or that comrade has been seen to go down with a song 
on his lips — he sings as he dies. He soothes himself 
with song, he beguiles himself with song, he steadies 
himself with song, he exalts himself' with song. It is 
not song as the German knows it, not the ponderous 
marching chorus that the Prussian Guard thunders to 
order in the same way that it thumps through its goose- 
step ; but rather a simple burst of song that is as natural 
and spontaneous as the soaring lark's greeting to the, 
rising sun. 
I was witness of a rather amusing incident illustrative 
of the difficulty that even the Alpini officer experiences 
in denying himself vocal expression, not only when it is 
strictly against regulations, but even on occasions when, 
both by instinct and experience, he knows that " break- 
ing into song " is really dangerous. It had to do with 
passing a certain exposed point in the Cadore at a 
time when there was every reason to fear the incidence 
of heavy avalanches. Your real Alpini has tremendous 
respect for the snow slide, but no fear. He has — and 
especially since the war — faced death in too many really 
disagreeable forms to have any dread of what must seem 
to him the grandest and most inspiring finish of the lot, 
the one end that the most of him could be depended upon 
to pick if ever the question of alternatives were in the 
balance. In the matter of the avalanche, as in most 
other things, he is quite fatahstic. If a certain yalan^a 
is meant for him, what use trying to avoid it ? If it 
is not meant for him, what "use taking precautions. 
All precautions will be vain against yoiiy avalanche ; all 
will be superfluous as regards the ones nol for you. 
It chances, however, that this comforting Oriental 
philosophy entered not into the reckoning of the Italian 
General Staff when it laid its plans for minimising un- 
necessary casualties, and so, among other precautionary 
admonitions, the order went out that soldiers passing 
certain exjioscd sections which should be (lesignatcd 
by boards bearing the warning " Pcricoloso di Valanga," 
should not raise the voice above a speaking lone. and. 
especially, that no singing should be indulged in. This 
* " Sons of Italy, Italy awakes, and wearing the helmet ol 
iil)li(ts her head." 
