Major Sproesser was Rommel’s commanding officer in Italy during WWI. He received his Pour Le Merite with Rommel for their daring and unrelenting pursuit of the Italians.
He (Sproesser) was promoted to Oberstleutnant on the 1st of March 1920 having entered the Reichsheer following the end of WW1. Promoted to Oberst on the 1st Feb 1922 he became the commandant of Glatz and retired as a Generalmajor on the 31st of March 1925. He died in 1932.
Around Tolmein, zero hour on the 24th October 1917 loosed an
attack with several prongs. The main thrust was directed against high ground west
of the Isonzo. Two German divisions and an Austrian division radiated out of
the bridgehead and over the river, striking up the steep flanks and spurs that
lead to the high ridges. Again the initial bombardment was highly effective,
smashing the Italian cordon around the bridgehead. By nightfall, despite stiff
resistance at some points, the attackers had captured the summits that expert
in mountain warfare, Lieutenant General Krafft von Dellmensingen, identified as
keys to Italian control.
North of Tolmein and east of the Isonzo, an Austrian
division overran the fragile lines below the summit of Mount Mrzli, which the
Italians had tried so hard to capture since 1915. With Badoglio’s artillery
standing silent, the Italians were rolled back towards the valley bottom, where
six German battalions advanced on both sides of the river, meeting little
resistance. By noon, the rain had turned to sleet and the Germans occupied
Kamno, a hamlet halfway to Caporetto.
Around midday, between Kamno and Caporetto, the Germans
clashed with a platoon of the 14th Regiment, 4th Bersaglieri Brigade. One of
the Italians involved in that firefight, Delfino Borroni, is the last Italian
veteran of the Twelfth Battle, still alive at this time of writing. His
regiment reached Cividale on the 22nd and marched through the rainy night to
the second line. They got to Livek, overlooking the Isonzo, very early on the
24th. Wet and hungry, the men found a store of chestnuts in one of the
buildings and roasted them over a fire. Corporal Borroni (b. 1898) gorged
himself, and had to run outside at the double. As he crouched in the bushes,
trousers round his knees, the commanding officer called his platoon to fall in.
‘Fix bayonets, boys, we’re going down!’ They crept towards the valley bottom in
the darkness and waited for several hours, wondering what was going on.
Eventually the Germans loom out of the mist. In Borroni’s memory, they are a
grey swarm, a cloud. With the advantage of surprise, the Italians take them all
prisoner: a detachment of some 80 men. The next German unit arrives at noon
with machine guns and forces the Italians back up the hill to Livek.
At 12:15, as Borroni and his men are ducking the machine-gun
fire near Caporetto, Cadorna is still asking how many guns the Second Army can
spare for the Third Army, to parry the expected thrust on the Carso.
The enemy reaches the edge of Caporetto at 13:55. A few
Italian officers try to stem the flood of troops retreating through the town.
Those with rifles are pulled out of the crowd; the rest are allowed to go on
their way, so as not to clog up the streets. When the men see this, they start
throwing away their rifles. They look as if they hate the war more than the
enemy. At 15:30, the retreating Italians blow the bridge over the Isonzo.
Caporetto is captured half an hour later, along with 2,000 Italian prisoners.
When German bugles sound in the main square, the Slovene citizens pour onto the
street ‘to welcome their German liberators’
The right flank of the force that attacked westwards out of
Tolmein at 08:00 was formed by the Alpine Corps, a specialist mountain unit of
division size, comprising Bavarian regiments and the Württemberg Mountain
Battalion. The WMB included nine companies, staffed and equipped to operate
autonomously. One of the company commanders was a 25-year-old lieutenant, a born
soldier and natural leader, clearheaded, physically tough and avid for glory.
His name was Erwin Rommel. Twenty-five years later, he would be one of the most
famous soldiers in the world, admired by Hitler, adored by his men and
respected by his enemies. This morning, Rommel was poised to grasp the sort of
opportunity that does not come twice in a lifetime. His company of 200 men,
deployed on the outer edge of the formation, was tasked to protect the right
flank of the Bavarian Life Guards as they attacked the Kolovrat ridge opposite
Tolmein.
Moving to the jump-off line, he is surprised by the lack of
interdiction fire. The Italian heavy batteries were active on the 23rd; what
has happened to them? His company reaches the Isonzo ‘frozen and soaked to the
skin’ by heavy rain. They could be stopped by machine guns, but there are none.
Again, the preparatory shelling has done its job; the surviving Italians emerge
from the rubble with hands high and faces ‘twisted in fear’.
Rommel traverses up the hillside while the Bavarians to his
left attack the hill head-on. The trees have not yet shed their leaves, and the
undergrowth is dense. This gives cover from the Italian lines above – all the
more welcome as the Württembergers have no artillery support: the Austro-German
batteries are all helping the frontal attack. Advancing at the speed of the
machine gunners, each carrying more than 45 kilograms, the company ‘worked its
way forward in the pouring rain, moving from bush to bush, climbing up
concealed in hollows and gullies’. They capture a series of isolated Italian
forward positions. ‘There was no organised resistance and we usually took a
hostile position from the rear. Those who did not surrender fled head over
heels into the lower woods, leaving their weapons behind.’
Moving on, they find intact batteries, deserted by their
crews. Fuelling themselves with Italian rations, they press on to the crest of
the Kolovrat. Here they encounter their first real obstacle: Hill 1114, well
fortified and defended, is the next bump or summit on the ridge, blocking their
advance. The Bavarians are already on the saddle below the hill, and their
commander tries to assert himself over the Württembergers. Rommel insists that
he takes orders from his battalion commander (who, conveniently, is far
behind).
Overnight, his mind works on the problem ahead. A frontal
attack on the hill would need artillery support. A bold alternative occurs: he
could lead a small detachment in a flanking movement around Hill 1114, then
break on to the ridge above the enemy stronghold and continue the attack along
the ridge, leaving the Bavarians to mop up. This plan – in effect, a local
application of infiltration tactics – appeals to ‘the aggressive officers and
men’ of the WMB. It has another advantage, too: ‘A successful breakthrough west
of Hill 1114 would have an effect on the positions lower down.’ In other words,
isolating the enemy would demoralise him. This reasoning, characteristic of
Rommel, gives a measure of the Germans’ advantage.
Rommel looks up at the ridge, sparkling in the sunrise on 25
October. The battalion commander has arrived and approved his plan. He leads
his detachment along the hillside, traversing below the ridge. They stumble on
an enemy outpost, fast asleep in a clump of bushes. His tally of prisoners is
mounting. The Italians higher up the ridge are no better prepared; the
possibility of being attacked before lower positions have fallen has not
occurred to them.
Beyond the next summit, called Kuk, the ridge falls sharply
to the village of Livek. The Italians on Kuk expect a frontal attack. Instead
Rommel swerves out of view across the southern flank of the hill, bypassing Kuk
entirely. The German machine gunners sweat and gasp in the noonday sun. Soon he
can look down onto Livek, swarming with Italians trying to fend off the German
units that are pressing up the hillside from the Isonzo valley. Beyond Livek,
the ridge rises again towards the goal: Mount Matajur, overlooking Friuli.
Whoever captures Matajur will win the Pour le Mérite, the Blue Max, Prussia’s
highest military honour.
As his detachment catches up, he decides that Mount Kuk can
be left to others. He moves down to the road connecting Livek to the rear, and
starts to capture Italian traffic. ‘Everyone was having fun and there was no
shooting,’ Rommel recalled gaily. ‘Soon we had more than a hundred prisoners
and fifty vehicles. Business was booming.’ Things get more serious when a
bersaglieri unit hoves into sight. After a fierce exchange of fire, he and his
150 Württembergers convince the 50 officers and 2,000 men of the 4th
Bersaglieri Brigade to surrender.
Nervous tension kept Rommel awake. Before midnight, a report
arrived that Italian troops were moving towards a hamlet higher up the ridge.
Enemy reinforcements could prove fatal to his endeavour; Rommel scrambled out
of his sleeping bag and led his detachment (now seven companies) up a narrow
path to the hamlet. ‘The great disk of the moon shone brightly on the slope,
steep as a roof.’
The next Italian line lay above the hamlet, apparently still
unoccupied. Rommel decided to encircle the line. ‘I felt that the god of War
was once more offering his hand.’ Despite heavy fire from positions on Mount
Cragonza, the next hill along the ridge, Rommel’s assault teams climbed around
the village unscathed until they looked down on the unsuspecting Italians. ‘We
shouted down and told them to surrender. Frightened, the Italian soldiers
stared up at us to the rear. Their rifles fell from their hands.’ The
Württembergers did not fire a shot. Without pausing, they attacked Cragonza. By
07:15, it was theirs.
It is late morning on the 26th, and Rommel looks up at Hill
1356, the last bump on the ridge before Matajur (1,641 metres). Using a
heliograph, he signals a request for German batteries on the other side of the
Isonzo to target the hill. As the Italians react to the accurate bombardment,
he swings south, turns the Italians’ flank and attacks from the rear. The
Italians rapidly withdraw, and Rommel halts. Hundreds of Italian soldiers are
standing about on the hilltop, nearly two kilometres away, ‘seemingly
irresolute and inactive’. As the crowd swells into thousands, he makes a
lightning decision. ‘Since they did not come out fighting, I moved nearer,
waving a handkerchief’, with his detachment spread out in echelons behind him.
‘We approached within 1,000 metres and nothing happened.’ The enemy ‘had no
intention of fighting although his position was far from hopeless! Had he
committed all his forces, he would have crushed my weak detachment.’ Instead,
‘The hostile formation stood there as though petrified and did not budge.’
The Germans have to follow a road through a wooded cleft
that separates them from the summit. Rommel and a small team hurry ahead,
reducing the Italians’ time to recalculate the odds. Far ahead of his
detachment, he breaks cover and walks steadily forward, waving his handkerchief
and calling on the Italians to lay down their arms. ‘The mass of men stared at
me and did not move. I had the impression that I must not stand still or we
were lost.’ When the gap between them has narrowed to 150 metres, the Italians
rush forward, throwing away their rifles, shouting ‘Evviva Germania!’ They
hoist the incredulous Rommel on their shoulders. Both regiments of the Salerno
Brigade surrender en masse. Their commander sits by the road with his staff,
weeping.
Rommel never understood the Salerno Brigade’s behaviour.
Twenty years later, he still marvelled at their surrender, given that ‘even a
single machine gun operated by an officer could have saved the situation’. He
could not conceive the condition of infantry who had been bundled to the top of
a mountain and ordered to defend it to the death against some of the best
soldiers in the world, without benefit of proper positions, artillery support,
communications or confident leadership. Nor, to judge by his memoir, was he
aware of the Italian infantry’s experience since 1915. The seeds of the Salerno
Brigade’s defeat were sown long before October 1917.
An order arrives from Rommel’s battalion commander: he must
pull back to Mount Cragonza. He decides the major must be poorly informed about
the situation ahead, and ignores the order. The stakes are too high, and
success will justify his disobedience. The conquest of Mount Matajur is relatively
simple. He and his men surprise an Italian company from the rear, near the
rocky summit, then divert the force on the summit while Rommel circles around.
Before the Germans have set up their machine guns for the final assault, the
Italians surrender. By 11:40, Matajur is in German hands. In little over two
days, Rommel and his men have covered 18 kilometres of ridge, as the crow
flies, involving nearly 3,000 metres of ascent, capturing 150 officers and
9,000 men at a cost of 6 dead and 30 wounded. Operating in harmony with the
landscape, moving at extraordinary speed, Rommel’s men swooped along the
hillsides, weaving across the ridge between Italian strongholds, mopping up
resistance as they went, protected as well as empowered by their own momentum.
The Württembergers gaze around at ‘the mighty mountain world’, laid out in radiant sunshine. The last ridges and spurs of the Julian Alps slope down to the lowlands of Friuli and the Veneto. There is Udine amid fertile fields. Far away to the south, ‘the Adriatic glittered’. Like Rommel’s own future. He wore the cross and ribbon of the Blue Max around his neck until the day in 1944 when Hitler, suspecting him of complicity in the so-called generals’ plot, gave him a choice: commit suicide, be buried as a hero and save your family, or be arrested, executed and disgraced. As on the sunlit mountains long before, he did not flinch.
