Page 264 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

THE SECRET WAR ON THE ITALIAN FRONT IN WWI (1915 – 1918)

of May and September 1917, and collected information on movements of troops, deployment of
new units, enemy losses, and morale of the troops” .
94
Right at the end of the bloody confrontation during the Tenth Battle of Isonzo started on 12 May
1917, the Chief of the 2 Army Staff, General Badoglio, commended the Headquarters of the
nd
Corps of Engineers operating around Gorizia for the effectiveness of its interceptions. Among
the papers found during this offensive were both small lists of conventional names assigned to
different levels of command, and more complete lists with new concealed terms than the ones the
Italians already had .
95

th
94 Headquarters, Corps of Engineers, 8 Army, Relazione sulle Intercettazioni Telefoniche (Report on Telephone eavesdropping
service), no. 6684T, 28 July 1918, p.13, AUSSME, Series E1, env.111. This report is the draft of an article published, with
much rewriting, in the Bulletin of the Corps of Engineers of February 1919, titled Servizio d’intercettazione delle trasmissioni
telefoniche (Telephone eavesdropping service).
95 Among the captured documents are telephone ciphers, code tables, and trench codes, including their instructions. Some
finds in the Italian and Austrian archives are so complete that one can believe they were captured documents.

262