On our way back on Sunday, we stopped to see a famous museum in Kobarid, just south of Bovec. The museum is dedicated to the Soča Front, a series of World War I battles that took place on the ridge above the Soča River Valley. These battles consisted of Italian forces attempting to take the ridge from Austo-Hungarian and German forces to no avail. On this 50-mile long ridge, over a 29-month period, an estimated 600,000 soldiers were killed and another one million were wounded (by contrast, 116,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and 200,000 wounded in World War I).
It was a harrowing experience for us to say the least. The musuem had photos from the battle and excerpts from soldiers' letters and journals that painted a horrific scene. Even more tragically, excerpts from military directives demonstrated little strategic reason for attempting to take the ridge in the first place and little to no land actually changed hands during these battles.
Six-hundred thousand killed and one million wounded. From what I have read on World War I, it sounds like a war that really didn't have to happen, but I never had a sense of the true tragedies that took place during the war. We had spent the weekend in awe of the natural beauty here; this gave us quite a different perspective.
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