Gondolas and motor boats
replaced the automobile supply lorries customary in land warfare.
Instead of motor ambulances, motor boats carried off the dead and
wounded. Hydro-airplanes replaced ordinary fighting aircraft.
Along the northern limit of the Venetian Gulf, where the Austrians,
having filtered into the Piave Delta, sought to cross both the Sile and
the Piave, the enemy each night hooked up pontoons. At daybreak every
morning one end of a huge pontoon structure was anchored to the east
bank of the Piave and the other flung out to the strong current, which
soon stretched the makeshift bridge across.
The moment this happened, the enemy infantry madly dashed across.
Simultaneously the Italian floating batteries opened a terrific fire.
Practically every morning the Austrians tried the trick, and every
morning they failed, with heavy losses, to effect a crossing. At last
they gave up the attempt as hopeless, and the armies remained locked on
the Piave for several months.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
REDEMPTION OF THE HOLY LAND
From the beginning of the war the German General Staff and the British
War Office planned the occupation of Palestine and Macedonia. Germany
wanted domination of that territory because through it lay the open road
to Egypt and British prestige in the East.
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