gterl

@Geezer: Sure no problem, you've a PM From 'A Pass, a King and a Mountain' ... We ran, as the lorries ran, into patches of melting snow, fringed with gentian clumps, heath, and crocus! These patches thickened to sheets, till at the head of a pass we found ten foot of packed snow, all newly shovelled back from the dry, perfectly graded road-bed. It trailed after us brokenly, through villages whose gutters danced with bright water, and closed up abreast of us in sheets once more when we reached Cortina. This was an ex-health and pleasure resort, which of late belonged to the Austrians, who filled it with 'new-art' hotels, each more villainous in design than its neighbour. To-day, as the troops and transport come and go, the jigsaw and coloured-glass atrocities look like bedizened ladies , standing distracted in the middle of a police raid. The enemy do not shell the hotels much, because they are owned by Austrian heyducs who hope to come back and resume their illustrious trade. In the old days, whole novels were written about Cortina. The little-used mountains round made an impressive background for love-tales and climbing adventures. Love has gone out of this huge basin of the Dolomites now, and the mountaineering is done by platoons in order to kill men, not by individuals who read papers before Alpine Clubs.

Trenches cannot be dug, any more than water can be found, on the Carso, for a spade's depth below the surface the unkindly stone turns to sullen rock, and everything must be drilled and blasted out. For the moment, because spring had been wet, the stones were greened over with false growth of weeds which wither utterly in the summer, leaving the rocks to glare and burn alone. As if all this savagery were not enough, the raw slopes and cusps of desolation were studded with numberless pits and water-sinks, some exquisitely designed by the Devil for machine-gun positions, others like small craters capable of holding eleven-inch howitzers, which opened at the bottom through rifts into dry caverns where regiments can hide - and be dug out.

WHEN ONE REACHED the great Venetian plain near Army Headquarters, the Italian fronts were explained with a clearness that made maps unnecessary. 'We have three fronts,' said my informant, 'On the first, the Isonzo front, which is the road to Trieste, our troops can walk, though the walking is not good. On the second, the Trentino, to the north, where the enemy comes nearest to our plains, our troops must climb and mountaineer, you will see.'

Dear Gentlemen - you may not have noticed, but unfortunately I have the duty to bring to your attention that this forum is currently rather quiet. In order to change this slightly disturbing fact, I've come to the only conclusion to provide a bit of entertainment. These hopefully amusing distractions will contain graphical images from the southern front. More precisely from the region between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy, that is. The pictures will be accompanied by according temporary descriptions, mostly by Rudyard Kipling. Sincerely George

Thx Wrench & Crusader - yes mountain top has no alpha and/or TOD objects. Did'nt see the 512 tiles limit in the readme...doohhhh