i6 
Land & Water 
July 25, 1 9 1 8 
. "We have found," said tlic chief surgeon, "that iiiv-iny 
wounds iiithcrto regarded as fatal are only so in cijnscquence 
of delay in operating upon them. This little hospital unit— 
which is Si) comiilete in equipment that it can do a limitea 
amount of every kind of work that any base hospitd can 
perform— was designed for the express purjiosc qf giving 
earlier attention to wounds of this kind, principally those ot 
the abdomen. From the first we saved a great number ot 
men who would otherwise never have survived to reach tlie 
base hospitals ; but even so we found we were still losing man\- 
as a consequence of the delay that would often arise in trans- 
porting them over some badly exposed bit of road on which 
it w;is not deemed safe to risk ambulances or stretcher bearers. 
Then we devised a special basket for wounded to be run on 
the tekferka (as you see here), with the result that we are 
now saving every" manit is humanly possible to save." 
While he was' speaking the telcferka which ended beside 
the tent of the operating theatre began to click, and pre- 
sently an oblong box—almost identical in size and shape with 
a coffin— appeared against the sky-line of the ridge and began 
gently gliding toward us along the sagging cable. " In that 
box/' continued the surgeon, "there will be a man whose life 
depends upon whether or not his wound can be operated upon 
within an hour or so of the time he received it. Although 
the man is probably unconscious, he is coming alone. No 
other life, and not even an ambulance, is risked in bringing 
him here. Except for the klcferka. he could not have been 
sent over until after dark, and the delay would have been 
fatal. We estimate that from one to three per cent, of 
the men wounded on a battlefield which, like this one, 
lies so exposed that they cannot be sent back at once 
by stretclicrs or ambulance, owe their lives directly to the 
tekferka." 
When the cover of the basket was lifted off in the station, 
the body of a man swathed in a blanket was revealed. He 
was unable to speak, but a note pinned to the blanket stated 
that he had been struck in the stomach with a shell fragment 
just outside the engine-house, and that nothing had been done 
save to wrap antiseptic gauze around him and bundle him 
-into the waiting kkferka basket. Before I left the hospital 
an hour later, the operation was over and the man resting 
comfortably with every hope of recovery. 
The Factor of Safety 
It seems to be a literal fact that no man has yet lost his 
life on the Italian front as a consequence of riding in a kk- 
ferka. Many have been killed in constructing them, and 
even more in patrolling the lines and keeping them in repair. 
Men have fallen or have jumped out of the baskets, often 
from considerable heights, and men have been brought in 
stit^ with cold after hours of exposure to a blizzard in .a 
"stalled" car. Hair-breadth escapes and rescues I heard of 
by the score, the story of one of the most remarkable of the 
latter having been related by no less a personage than the 
brave and distinguishtrd Colonel " Peppino" Garibaldi, grand- 
son of the "Liberator" and hero of the famous capture of 
the peak of the Col di Lano. 
While I was staying with Colonel Garibaldi in the Dolomites 
last winter, the station of a kkferka which I had been ex- 
pecting to use on the morrow in going up to the lines on the 
glacier of the Marmolada was carried away by an avalanche, 
which killed one of the engineers. It was the receipt of the 
news of this disaster which led my host to remark that one 
of the most spectacularly brave feats he had ever heard of 
had been performed by an Alpino the previous winter in con- 
nection with putting right a stalled car on- this very span of 
cable-way which had just been destroyed. 
"At this stage of the game," said Colonel Garibaldi "they 
were not grooving tho wheels of the kkferka basket deeply 
enough, with the result that they were occasionally blown 
off the cables by strong winds. So far as we could, the 
carrying of passengers was susjjcnded during blizzards ; but 
of course, every now and then an occasion would arise when 
the chance had to be taken. That was how it happened that 
a staff officer from the Commando Supremo, who had never 
been on a kkferka before, was in a basket which was blown 
from the cable of the first Marmolada span at the height of 
a heavy storm last March. The basket was within a couple 
of hundred metres of the end of its journey when the "derail- 
ment" of its two forward wheels occurred — in fact, it was a 
good deal nearer "land" in that direction than downwards, 
where there was a clear drop of six or eight hundred feet 
on to frozen snow. 
"If the air sis quiet, a basket (going up, of course — the 
' down ' one runs by gravity) with only one pair of wheels off, 
can usually be 'nursed' along the cable by gentle tugs from 
the engine, and that was what the engineers tried to do in 
this instance. The side pressure of the wind was too strong, 
however, and within a yard or two the cable wedged in 
beside the .^vlieels and jammed hard. If there had not been 
a man in the basket they would simply have sped up the 
engine and gone on pulling until either the basket came up 
or something broke. If the former, all was well ; if the 
latter, they picked up the pieces as soon as the weather 
jiermitted, rushed their repairs and started up again. But, 
with a passenger — and especially a staff officer — -to reckon 
with it was a different proposition. 
" Luckily, the man kept his nerve, and between snow 
flurries they could see him working hard tr\Mng tn get the 
wheels on again. An expert kkferka line-man can, with 
luck, occasionally put a pair of wheels back on the ' track ' 
alone ; but, unless one understands exactly how to take his 
weight off the basket by hanging over the cable, the job is 
as hopeless as trying to lift yourself by your boot-straps. 
This chap was anything but an expert, and, after fumbling 
with numbing fingers for ten or fifteen minutes, waved his 
hand with a gesture of despair and sank back into the 
bottom of the heeled-over basket. 
"The Alpino has lived among blizzards all his life, and is 
able to figure' pretty closely how much resistance is left in a 
man exposed to wind and cold under any given conditions. 
They knew that a man tucked in comfortably in a basket 
on an 'even keel' waiting for engine repairs is good for 
several times as long as one hanging on for dear life to the 
sides of an apparently hopelessly stalled and half-upset basket. 
Most of the men watching from the station gave the poor 
chap from fifteen to twenty minutes ; it was only the most 
optimistic who said half an hour. In any case, there was 
only one thing to do^to send a man down to the disabled 
basket — and a line-man, who had shortly before performed a 
similar feat successfully when a load of badly needed shells 
was stalled on the cable, volunteered to do it. 
A Gallant Rescue 
"Suspending the intrepid fellow from the cable in a hastily 
rigged harness hung from a spare pair of wheels, they tied a 
long line round his waist and let him coast down by gravity 
to the basket. The line, paid out slowly, kept him from 
gaining too much momentum. The journey — an easy feat 
for a man with a good head — was made without mishap. 
The officer's mind was still clear and his nerve unbroken, but, 
numb with cold and on the verge of physical collapse, he was 
unable to lift a finger to save himself. The most he could do 
was to maintain his hold, and even that he could not be 
expected to do for long. 
" For some time the Alpino — still suspended in his harness — 
put forth all his strength in an endeavour to lift the basket 
sufficiently to allow the displaced wheels to slip back on to the 
cable, but there was no way to bring enough force to bear to 
be of any use, and, after nearly spilling out the man he was 
trying to save, he gave it up. Next he tried to lighten the 
basket of the weight of the officer by passing a couple of 
hitches of the bight of the line around him and tricing him 
up to the cable immediately overhead. 
" By now it was evident to the would-be rescuer that nothing 
could be accomplished unless the helpless officer were -got 
clear of the car entirely, which could only be effected by 
changing places with him. How the resolute fellow did it, 
heaven and the Special Providence which always sees the 
Alpini through, only know. They paid him out "a couple of 
yards more of line when they felt him tugging for it, and then 
they had a, snow-blurred vision of him scrambling about the 
tilted car for three or four busy minutes. > Finally they got 
the short sharp double tug which was the signal he had 
arranged to give in the event that he failed in his attempt 
and wanted to be drawn back. 
"Not a little cast down over this development, thev began 
hauling in from the station, only to feel the more" appre- 
hensive when they saw it was a limp and apparently lifeless 
body that was coming up to them out of the storm. A 
reassuring yodel rolled up from the misty depths at this 
juncture, however, and the sharpest-eyed of them announced 
that he could see his comrade 'jack-knifed' over the cable 
jerking the basket straight. Even before the body of the 
officer, who had swooned, with its wind-blown arms and legs 
flopping like a scare-crow, was swung on to the landing and 
released from its harness, tne ringing bang of a steel spanner 
on the cable gave the familiar signal of 'Haul away i' 
"He came up (so his captain told me later, concluded 
Colonel (iaribaldi), sitting on the rim of the basket with his 
eagle's feather rasping along the sagging cable all the way, 
his hob-nailed boots drumming a tattoo on the steel bottom, 
and singing the Alpini marching song in a voice that set 
the echoes ringing above the howling of the storm." 
