The Remnants of a War

During the First World War, there were two armies that were engaged in their own unique fight. In what became known as the White War, the Italians and Austrians were fighting one other high in the Alps, primarily on the icy glaciers of the Dolomite Mountains.

The soldiers frequently excavated tunnels in the ice. The Austrian Corps of Engineers even excavated a full base beneath the Marmolada Glacier, complete with barracks and corridors. Everything was abandoned after the war. Salvagers were the only ones who dared to venture out there, but they were only interested in scrap metal, not antiques or records. Nature quickly reclaimed the region and buried everything under ice once they ceased showing up.

That was how things remained for over a century. But as the glaciers began to melt, they gradually revealed everything again, and people could see a century-long war. They recovered firearms, cannons, supplies, food, letters, diaries, photographs, and, of course, bodies. Particularly stunning were the well-preserved frozen bodies of two young Austrian soldiers – both of them adolescents with blond hair and blue eyes, and both with bullet holes in the skull.

Found: After World War I

Location: the Dolomite Mountains