Excerpt from ATTACKS
By Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

The heavy machine-gun platoon was so emplaced on the top floor of a house that it covered the railway and highway bridge at Pirago, a thousand yards away, across which small groups of Italians were moving southward. Its mission was to bar this road to larger units. We had less than a thousand rounds per gun and this meant close economy in our ammunition expenditure.

Then I sent several scout squads, under particularly capable leaders, across the Piave. They were to cross the river in very loose formation and, once on the west side, were to move to the vicinity of Pirago and capture all the small enemy groups which were straggling south. As soon as a fairly large number of prisoners had been gathered, they were to send them to the east bank of the Piave in the direction of Dogna. This was a difficult mission and required a maximum of skill and dash from the men as well as from the leaders.

The five scout squads moved forward under strong fire support but their progress was slow. Under these circumstances, I doubted whether any of them would reach the west bank of the Piave.
Meanwhile, Major Sproesser had arrived at the mouth of the pass with the signal company and the attached 1st Battalion of the 26th Imperial and Royal Rifle Regiment. Upon my request, the signal company now relieved the 3d Company in the position south of the mouth of the pass. Then, by rushes in small groups, the 3d Company joined us in Dogna.

We saw no signs of the scout squads in the river bed, although hostile machine guns were spraying the bare gravel banks of the half mile wide river bed. Toward 1400, I attacked from Dogna with the 1st and 3d Companies on a broad front in the direction of Pirago. My idea was to get some units across the river and block the valley road on the west side by the fire of the rest of the detachment. Heavy machine-gun and artillery fire drove us to ground after we had covered a few hundred yards, and we had to dig to find cover. Our net achievement was that we were deployed on a broad front six hundred yards from the enemy's line of retreat and that our attack had drawn the enemy fire from the scout squads farther to the south.

I was skeptical as to whether or not any of the five scout squads had reached the west bank of the Piave, so I sent out two other squads under Lieutenants Streicher and Triebig. The former was soon incapacitated by the blast effect of an Italian shell on the main branch of the Piave, and the latter was wounded by machine-gun fire. It seemed impossible to get a single man across the river. From two sides the Italian artillery cut up the terrain in which we were lying. His guns were in position just south of Longarone and in the vicinity of Mount Dregnon (southwest). The enemy did not seem to lack ammunition.