If you go climbing or walking in the Dolomites, as I frequently have, you still come across many visible relics of the fighting. Barbed wire emplacements, dugouts, tunnels, artillery positions are still there virtually unchanged apart from the gradual depradations of weather. Most of the familiar history of the First World War centres on the trench warfare on the Western Front: but the fighting in the Italian Alps was every bit as terrible. Enduring shellfire in the mud and soft ground of Flanders was one thing: enduring shellfire in the bare rock terrain of the Alps quite another. Entire battalions were also lost in the snow.
My grandfather was a British Army vet of the Great War. He was, however, fighting over in the last days of the Ottoman Empire (not that fighting there was much more pleasant, mind you). I’ve yet to make it over to Europe.
“Entire battalions were also lost in the snow.”
The armies would trigger avalanches on each other; must have been terrifying. While the mountain fighting was pretty static, the Austrians generally performed well against the Italians.