Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/787068
86 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S away their weapons, burning whatever could not be carried, blowing up bridges, looting as they went . . . They moved on, not saying a word, with only one idea in their head: to reach the lowland, to get away from this nightmare." A ncient history, Kevin would say, if I asked him about it. But is it? In the farms above the river must live at least a few hundred-year-olds who were alive when the fighting started; some old peasant women must have older brothers they never knew, and there are men and women my age who never knew their grandfathers, lost in one of the 12 battles of the Soca/Isonzo. My mind raced and hopped, thinking about the tragedy, trying to square it with the idyllic beauty flowing past the bank on which I sat. Can the past stain a river so deeply it never recovers, or, given enough time, are the evil memories eventually all scrubbed away? I wondered, for instance, what the river's famous marble trout had made of the Caporetto battle. Surely, with the valley having been fought over for so long, many of them had already met their end by l917, blown up for food or as collateral damage during this barrage or that. The ones that survived? The concussions from the artillery on October 24 must have made them uncomfortable, the bridges collapsing must have confused them to no end, and as for the men desperately splashing across the river or the bodies floating past . . . . "For the Italians, the Twelfth battle began as something unthinkable. By the time they realized what was happening, they were powerless to stop it. The last week of October 1917 put Italy in the greatest peril it had known since Hannibal destroyed the Roman legions at Cannae, more than 2,000 years before." W hen you fish a haunted river, these are the kinds of things you think about, and if you don't, perhaps it's time to take up a less reflective sport. I'd never seen such a beautiful river; I'd never been in a place where the past pressed down so heavily. Out in the center of the Soca, trout began rising to those wispy-looking midges, but I didn't go after them right away. A minute of silence, a minute of stillness, was the least I could do to remember those boys. I counted off the seconds to myself, facing water that didn't look like it had a care in the world. When I got to 60, I remained where I was, staring, not into the river now, but toward those spotlessly white mountain peaks from which, a hundred years ago, death had poured down. But it's not an even contest, in the end—this war between a haunted past and a vibrant present, not if you fight it on a river as lovely as the Soca. The past fights with those wretched statistics of loss, grainy black and white photos in museums and books, ruined trenches disappearing under moss. The present, to put against these, has bright, dancing water, an intoxicating mountain breeze, an alpine purity of light, and—and it was high time I got back to them now—those difficult and fascinating fish named after the material war monuments are made of: marble, marble trout. n W hen you see pictures of fly fishing in Slovenia, the kind meant to lure fishermen into visiting, they're often taken from the same spot: on the Soca above Bovec/Flitsch, with a backdrop of spectacular mountains that makes you think of the Grand Tetons. This is where Kevin brought me the last morning. He brought me for the fishing, not the history, but this is the place where in October l917 the German-Austrian divisions made their surprise attack, driving the panicking Italian troops downstream toward Caporetto/Kobarid. The trout are smart and challenging here, which is usually just how I like them. I enjoy focusing on tactical problems— studying the hatches, watching for rises, reading the water—demands that, for a few hours anyway, make me forget the problems of the larger world. Politics? The economy? Fears of this happening or that? I'll have plenty of time to worry about those later, but for now it's all about connecting with those fish. But this kind of single-minded immersion is harder on the Soca than on any other river I've ever fished. It was one thing when Kevin was there, coaching me, teaching me, cheering me on, but something else again when he went to go talk with the riverkeeper, and I was left alone on the bank to brood. (Riverkeepers here are hard-looking men, but friendly enough, at least if you have your fishing permit and your barbs are pressed down.) The sun had disappeared, and the falling temperature made it feel like autumn. I was thinking about the river even more intensely than when I stood in the middle casting, but it wasn't about what the trout were doing, but what had happened here, right here, 100 years ago. What had happened? A huge battle, one of the most dramatic of the Great War. The river that flowed over my wading boots had once literally ran red with blood, as soldiers, young men my son's age, fled down it in a desperate attempt to get away. Hemingway's Frederic Henry plunges into the freezing Soca to escape the carbonari shooting their own troops; others must have plunged into it in a crazed attempt to ease the pain of their wounds; many fell into it when the bridges were blown or collapsed under the weight of all that panic; others were hurled into it by the force of shelling; bodies must have been rolled into it just to get them out of the way. "At 2:00 a.m. on October 24, the German and Austrian batteries opened up along the 30-kilometer front," Mark Thompson explains in his classic account of the battle, The White War. "The weight and accuracy of fire were unprecedented, smashing the Italian gun lines, observation posts and communications as if the mountains themselves were collapsing. Even the veterans of Verdun and the Somme had seen nothing like it—the purpose was to atomize the defense . . . After knocking out the Italian guns, the Germans fired 2,000 poison-gas shells into the Flitsch basin. Blending with the fog, the yellowish fumes went undetected until too late . . . Survivors were in full retreat down the river, throwing I was thinking about the river . . . but it wasn't about what the trout were doing, but what had happened here 100 years ago: a huge battle, one of the most dramatic of the Great War. The river that flowed over my wading boots had once literally ran red with blood, as soldiers, young men my son's age, fled down it in a desperate attempt to get away.