Page 111 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER SIX

Telecommunications and Intelligence

6.1 MILITARY COMMUNICATION MEDIA

From the early phases of war, Italian army exploited various communication tools which allowed
orders transmission along the chains of command, requests and information from first line to the
Headquarters, actions coordination between infantry and artillery on the battlefields, etc. The
application fields of those media rested on their different characteristics, briefly illustrated in what
follows and including the maximum reachable distances, the transmission speeds, and the capacity
of preserving the secrecy. However, their joint employment was also envisaged for increasing the
survivability of connections among the combat units, even in the most difficult circumstances.

“classIc” MeThods for dIsPaTch TransMIssIon

The oldest way to transmit orders and
communications on battlefields is the
use of dispatch couriers who, also during
the WWI, carried a large amount of
written and, at times, oral messages. The
messengers, when travelling by horse,
bicycle, motorcycle, etc. certainly achieved
a faster transfer of dispatches, but enemy
fire and the risk of being captured remained
an obstacle, especially along unprotected
routes. Therefore, relay couriers were often
employed as the ultimate resource in default
of other faster and safer communication
means.
Trained animals, sometimes dogs, but more
often carrier pigeons, were also exploited to
transport messages. The capacity of pigeons
to carry dispatches, covering hundreds
of kilometres at considerable speed - up
to 60-80 km per hour - had been known
for centuries. The moderate number of
occurrences in which pigeons could not go
back to their dovecote once they had been
freed, encouraged the Armies to create
specialised pigeon services.
During WWI, the Italian army started to
use war pigeons in the spring of 1917. The 6.1 One of the pigeongrams preserved at the ISCAG
initial number of five dovecotes assigned to Museum

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