Un anno sull'altipiano ( A year on the high plateau) by Emilio Lussu. As a sardu he served in the Great War with the Sassari Brigade. If you know the area you can sometimes walk mentally along to the same slopes and ridges. Some scenes seem grotesque but the Italian officer corps and military leadership was perhaps the most arrogant and inept in Western Europe. In some instances you truly feel like laughing out and crying at the same time.
Don't know how good the English translation is. His Italian is both a child of those era and is own, as descriptive as sarcastic. The title reveals how little that front is know in the English speaking world.
*This 'High plateau' is of course the one fought over. Ironically it was for a long defended by it's German speaking population in alliance with Venice against the Holy Roman Empire, while in the book Italian speaking soldiers of the Empire hold a ridge against the attacking Sardinians.
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