Caught in a crossfire and indefensibly exposed on the valley floor, the army could have been saved by an orderly retreat. The Italian generals in the rear would have none of it. The blame could only be cowardice in the front, not strategic error in the rear. More men were thrown into the killing field. Eventually, when the outcome became obvious to everyone, the remnants of the Italian army broke ranks and fled in retreat, the Austrians pursuing them with murderous advantage. But the retreat was directly back into the infuriated generals who attempted to reverse the flow by arresting, then executing for "desertion" the panicked, surviving infantrymen. Firing squads were rapidly assembled just a few kilometers behind the collapsing front. Anyone moving south was shot. Even after the outcome of the battle itself was settled, the self-annihilation of the Italian army continued as the blundering command sought to salvage an honor of sorts. Most of the casualties were killed in battle or retreat by the Austrians. Of the remaining, most were shot by their own army. A few were taken prisoner by the Austrians, re-retreating back to the front to seek mercy from the enemy, and a few were conscripted necessarily into the firing squads and thus "saved" for and by shooting their fellow soldiers. The Italian army simply ceased to exist, with the exception of the rear guard officers. They returned nervously to Italy where many were themselves executed to make the tragedy complete. Into this scene of panic and death Hemingway vividly crafted the horror and the insanity. War was for killing and for dying. Honor and duty and bravery were simply the wandering justifications for a catharsis of bloodletting. The scenes of death and the smell of gunpowder still circled through my thoughts as I drove up the valley of the American River that Labor Day, separated by fifty years, 12,000 miles, and two generations. Esoteric, disconnected history. Yet still disturbing. So Joe thought perhaps we, that meant I, should do some fishing. That also meant Joe needed to stop, his prostate being one of the few limits to our meanderings. It might take him half an hour to relieve himself, depending on his state of mind. I pondered the options. The Naches, a tributary of the American, itself a tributary of the Yakima, whose drainage the road would follow at least had a minor reputation to hold some fish. We were twenty miles and minutes from the split. "Can you wait twenty minutes, Joe," I asked, thinking of his prostate. "If I couldn't wait I wouldn't have to. I've had ten years of waiting." I laughed as I chewed on that and drove on.
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