Both Joshua and I had fought in Iraq, but we had never known war like this. We had all served in the military, Chris as a Navy corpsman attached to the Marine Corps, and Joshua and I with the Army infantry.

By mid-morning the fog and low clouds had cleared, and before us lay the battlefield, its slopes scored with trenches and stone shelters, the summits laced with tunnels where men lived like moles. вЂњJust to pump a bunch of men up a hill to get slaughtered.вЂќДЇor the next two hours our trail alternated between heady climbing on rock faces and mellow hiking along the mountain ridge. вЂњA beautiful piece of engineering, but what a wasteful need,вЂќ said Chris Simmons, the third member of our group. Just below us a narrow road skirted the mountainside, the ItaliansвЂ™ Road of 52 Tunnels, a four-mile donkey path, a third of which runs inside the mountains, built by 600 workers over ten months in 1917. Had they reached the Venetian plain, they could have marched on Venice and encircled much of the Italian Army, breaking what had been a bloody yearlong stalemate. In the spring of 1916, the Austrians swept down through these mountains. вЂњWeвЂ™re in one of the most beautiful places in the world,вЂќ he said, вЂњand one of the most horrible.вЂќ Joshua Brandon gazed at the surrounding peaks and took a swig of water. The previous night we had slept near the ossuary, along a country road where cowbells clanged softly and lightning bugs blinked in the darkness like muzzle flashes. We could see the Pasubio Ossuary, a stone tower that holds the remains of 5,000 Italian and Austrian soldiers who fought in these mountains in World War I. Sheep bleated in a meadow, and a shepherd called to them. We scaled the 50 feet of steel rungs, stopping every ten feet or so to clip our safety tethers to metal cables that run alongside.ДЄ half-hour in, our faces slick with sweat, we rested on an outcropping that overlooked a valley carpeted with thick stands of pine and fir. To reach the battlefield we would trek several miles along this via ferrata, or iron road, pathways of cables and ladders that traverse some of the most stunning and otherwise inaccessible territory in the mountains of northern Italy. A curious ladder of U-shaped steel rungs was fixed to the rock. Just after dawn we slipped into the forest and hiked a steep trail to a limestone wall. Ultimately, the fighting served as a sideshow for other battles that determined the warвЂ™s outcome. An Italian trench in the Pasubio Mountains.

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