October 14th, 1915

- Overnight five German Zeppelins undertake a bombing raid on London.  While L11 turned back near the English coast after coming under fire, dropping his bombload on several small villages, and L16 strikes the town of Hertford, twenty miles north of London, the three others all manage to hit the British capital.  Most notably, L15, watched by members of Parliament who had been debating an emergency taxation measure, drops its bombs from Charing Cross to the Bank of England, with the second bomb exploding in Wellington Street and killing seventeen, the greatest number of deaths caused by a single bomb in a raid to date.  L13, meanwhile, targets pumping and power stations at Hampton as well as Woolwich Arsenal, and L14, after a lengthy diversion to Hythe on the Kent coast where it dropped nine bombs on an army encampment and killed fifteen soldiers, struck the suburb of Croydon where a number of homes were damaged or destroyed.  Though the Zeppelins had trouble with fog on the return voyage, all return safely (though L15 landed three miles short of Nordholz, necessitating repairs).  This raid is one of the deadliest of the war, with 71 killed and 128 injured, including 38 killed and 87 injured in London itself.

- The Kossava continues unabated in Serbia today, and the only craft able to cross the swollen Save and Danube Rivers are boats with motors or steam engines, of which only two are available to transport supply for the entire German III and X Reserve Corps.  For the German and Austro-Hungarian forces on the south banks of the rivers, supply problems continue.

South of Belgrade further attacks by the German XXII Reserve Corps and the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps succeed in pushing the Serbians back from their forward positions, and elements of the German 43rd and 44th Reserve Divisions advance on either side of the railway running towards Ripanj.  On the front of the German 11th Army, after reconnaissance patrols yesterday established that the Serbs had evacuated Požarevac, the German 3rd Bavarian Regiment occupies the town today.

Meanwhile the Bulgarian 1st and 2nd Armies begin their advance today.  Given that the former is clearly aimed directly at Niš, the Serbs have deployed strong forces, totalling five infantry divisions and one cavalry division, to contain the Bulgarian advance in the mountain passes east of the city.  Given the strong resistance, coupled with the continuing bad weather, the Bulgarian 1st Army makes no progress today.  However, given the continued pressure the Serbs are under on all fronts, they are incapable of being strong everywhere, and only small forces can be spared to hold back the Bulgarian 2nd Army.

The deployment of the Bulgarian 1st and 2nd Armies and the Serbian forces assigned to
contain them, Oct. 14th, 1915.

- French forces begin to arrive at Strumica Station today, where they join seven Serbian battalions.  Given their proximity to the Bulgarian frontier here, however, they quickly come under Bulgarian artillery fire.

October 13th, 1915

- At noon today British artillery commence a preliminary bombardment of a six-thousand-yard stretch of the German line north of Loos, the target of today's attack.  Most of the fire is concentrated on German trenches, machine-gun posts, and barbed wire, though 114 guns concentrate on German artillery positions identified by aerial reconnaissance over the past several days.  The lengthy preparation has also allowed the British to move up and deploy gas cylinders, which are opened at 150pm.  The wind carries the gas in the desired direction along the entire line except at the north, where the wind direction would have pushed the gas down the British trenches instead of across No Man's Land.  Ten minutes later at 2pm, whistles sound and four divisions of the British 1st Army go on to the attack.  To the north, 2nd Division of I Corps advances north of the Hohenzollern Redoubt against a trench known as Little Willie, while 46th Division of XI Corps, fresh after being redeployed from the Ypres salient, assaults the German redoubt itself.  IV Corp's other division - 12th - is to seize The Quarries to the south of the redoubt, while 1st Division of IV Corps moves against a stretch of the German line on the Lens-La Bassée road.

The British attack north of Loos, October 13th, 1915.

The gas, however, did not have a noticeable effect on the German defenders other than to warn them that an attack was imminent.  Moreover, the preliminary bombardment had not succeeded in knocking out the German artillery, which open fire on the British infantry in the open as they cross No Man's Land.  As a result, the British suffer heavy casualties before they even reach the German line.  On the northern flank, only one officer, a Lieutenant Abercrombie, and one soldier actually make it into the Little Willie trench, and when Abercrombie sends the other soldier back to ask for support, the latter is wounded and the message never arrives.  On his own, Abercrombie wages what amounts to his own private war against the Germans, putting a machine-gun post out of action with his grenades.  With no bombs remaining, Abercrombie manages to return to British lines unscathed, his success notable for its audacity but otherwise without significance on the larger battle.  To the south, 138th Brigade of 46th Division advances over ground partially sheltered from German view, and are able to break into the Hohenzollern Redoubt.  Efforts to secure Fosse Trench beyond, however, fail as the division's other brigade - 137th - fails to get into the Big Willie trench, leaving the forward elements of 138th Brigade exposed to flanking fire.  Further south, 35th Brigade of 12th Division gains a foothold in the southeast corner of The Quarries while elements of 37th Brigade seize 250 yards of Gun Trench, and both brigades are able to hold off German counterattacks.  On the other hand, the attack of 1st Division is an abysmal failure - artillery fire fails to break the German wire, and the attacking infantry, trying to work their way through the few gaps in the wire, come under withering fire and take heavy losses.

British artillery bombards the Hohenzollern  Redoubt as gas drifts towards the German lines, October 13th, 1915.

Overall the British attack has achieved certain tactical successes, capturing and holding toeholds in the German line from the Hohenzollern Redoubt to Gun Trench.  However, these positions remain precarious and further attacks will be needed simply to consolidate the British gain, to say nothing of driving beyond the German lines attacked today.  The four British divisions, meanwhile, have taken significant losses, and the commander of XI Corps decides that 46th Division suffered sufficient casualties as to necessitate its withdrawal from the line, and this evening he orders the Guard Division back to the front in its place.

- To the south near Vimy Ridge, the German Guard Corps, after a series of counterattacks, manages to retake the trenches at the Five Crossroads west of Givenchy today.  Meanwhile, meeting with Joffre today, Foch argues for a resumption of the attack, given that 'only a bound' can gain the crest of Vimy Ridge.  He argues that the attack of the 11th had broken down due to insufficient artillery support - the heavy artillery of 10th Army had fired 73 000 shells prior to the September 25th assault as compared to only 21 600 shells prior to the 11th.  Joffre, however, replies that he does not have the ammunition to give, and moreover that the most recent failure has shown that 10th Army does not have the ability to make another big push.  Joffre thus instructs Foch to halt further major assaults, only attacking to consolidate the gains won west of Vimy of Ridge over the past three weeks.

- Joffre's order to Foch effectively brings the French fall offensive to a close, given that the French commander-in-chief had halted operations in Champagne on the 7th.  The French have gained ground in both Champagne and Artois - up to four kilometres in the former and up to two kilometres in the latter.  However, the ground seized confers no great strategic advantage, and is a far cry from both Joffre's objectives and the possibilities that appeared to exist in the first days of the attack.  Especially in Champagne, the initial French attack broke through the main German defensive position, driving several kilometres in a matter of hours while inflicting heavy losses on the defenders.  The failure to follow up this success and push through the reserve German line after the 25th highlights once again that the true tactical difficulty on the Western Front is not the initial attack but the follow up; that poor communication, delays in reserve forces moving forward over broken ground, and difficulties in coordinating artillery fire in a fluid engagement all combine to impair subsequent assaults.  In both regions the French had fired almost 4.4 million light and over 800 000 thousand heavy artillery shells, but only on the first day, when they had been firing on German defences that were well-known and whose position had been precisely known, had the bombardment had a decisive effect.  In the following days, when the artillery was firing on unfamiliar, and in some cases unknown, German positions, the bombardment had been much less effective.  It points to the necessity of accurate knowledge of enemy defences and where artillery fire is needed during battle, but the delays in communicating by foot across the former No Man's Land renders this exceedingly difficult.  Overall, the small French gains in Champagne and Artois had come at the cost of just over 190 000 casualties, including 30 000 dead, 110 000 wounded, and 50 000 missing in action.

On the German side, 6th Army in Artois lost just over 50 000 while the casualties of 3rd and 5th Armies in Champagne numbered just over 80 000.  The battle had a notable impact on Falkenhayn; in the first days of the fighting, as the battle hung in the balance and French breakthrough appeared possible, he was acutely aware of how he had stripped the Western Front of reserves for his earlier campaign in Russia and the ongoing operation against Serbia.  When Lieutenant-Colonel Gerhard Tappen, OHL's operations officer, met Falkenhayn on the 27th, he found the German chief of staff 'very dejected'.  However, as the German armies have held on over the next three weeks, Falkenhayn draws different conclusions from the course of the fighting.  Despite Entente superiority in manpower and material, the achievement of operational surprise, and the reduction of German reserves, the British and French had been unable to break through the German lines.  It confirms Falkenhayn's emphasis on the importance of constructing multiple trench lines to contain enemy assaults.  More importantly, Falkenhayn concludes that if an attacking can not achieve a breakthough in such propitious circumstances, a breakthrough is not a realistic possibility given the conditions of the war on the Western Front.  This informs not only Falkenhayn's defensive outlook; instead of attempting to break through Entente lines in the future, another strategic objective will have to inform future German offensives.  Moreover, the failure of the French fall offensive serves to reinforce Falkenhayn's poor opinion of the French army, believing it to be approaching the end of its strength.  These two threads, comprising the key lessons Falkenhayn takes from the fall fighting in Champagne and Artois, will figure decisively in the course of the fighting in 1916.

- In Serbia the storm portented in yesterday's weather has engulfed the region.  It is a Kossava, an autumnal weather sytem that comes up from the southeast, bringing heavy rains and high winds.  Though the storm had been expected, its intensity takes the Germans by surprise.  On the Danube and Save Rivers waves reach six feet high and more, and parts of the islands on the rivers flood.  By the end of the day the raging torrents have destroyed or rendered unusable all of the bridges that German and Austro-Hungarian engineers built across the rivers since the offensive began.  This effectively cuts the German and Austro-Hungarian forces on the southern banks off from their supplies and heavy artillery on the northern bank.  Further, the heavy rains turn the dirt roads of the region into impassible mud.  The conditions makes a pause in the offensive to resupply and await better conditions an obvious option, and General Gallwitz of the German 11th Army argues for precisely this course of action.  Mackensen and Seeckt, however, speed is of the utmost priority to prevent the Entente forces recently landed at Salonika from moving north and reinforcing the Serbian army before it can be defeated in battle.  Moreover, despite the successes to date the bridgeheads of the two armies are still almost twenty miles apart, and creating a continuous front will put more pressure on the Serbs.

On the ground, the next objective of the German XXII Reserve Corps and the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps of the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army are the Avala Hills, but when they advance today they encounter well-developed defensive positions manned by the Serbian 1st Timok, 2nd Timok, and 1st Morava Divisions.  In the poor weather and advancing over difficult terrain, the attackers make minimal progress.  To the west, additional attacks by the Austro-Hungarian XIX Corps failed to secure significant gains yesterday, and today Mackensen orders the corps to leave only enough soldiers to hold the bridgeheads and redeploy the rest east to cross the Save River at Big Zigeuner Island where it can take its intended position on the western wing of the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army.  On the front of the German 3rd Army, despite Gallwitz's reservations, the German 107th Division attacks east of Požarevac, fighting its way through a Serbian defensive line at Kalidol, while X Reserve Corps seizes the high ground at Lipovac.

Meanwhile, the Bulgarian government formally severs diplomatic relations with Serbia today, a prelude to the planned invasion of the country tomorrow.  General Zhekov, chief of the Bulgarian general staff, has deployed two armies - 1st and 2nd - along the country's western frontier with Serbia.  To the north, 1st Army, consisting of 6th, 8th, 9th, and 1st Divisions, is deployed east of its ultimate objective, the de facto Serbian capital at Niš.  To the south, 2nd Army, with 3rd and 7th Divisions, is push westwards into the Vardar River valley and sever the railway linking Niš and Salonika, thus preventing the rapid movement of Entente forces at the latter into Serbia.

October 12th, 1915

- After numerous delays, the next big push by the British 1st Army is scheduled to go in tomorrow afternoon, and this evening BEF commander Field Marshal Sir John French issues new objectives for 1st Army.  To this point, Haig's instructions have remained those issued on September 18th; namely, to reach the line of Haute Deule Canal, which south of Lille runs in a curve towards the front before angling to Douai to the southeast.  Now, however, French abandons the canal as the ultimate objective.  Instead, after the hoped-for success tomorrow in recapturing the Hohenzollern Redoubt and securing its northern flank, 1st Army will conduct subsidiary operations to secure ground from which another major offensive can be launched in the future.  This is a distinctive, and deliberate, reduction in the overall aim of the British offensive - though ground around the village of Loos has been gained, the broader aim of a breakthrough has not been achieved, and French is already looking towards preparations for the next major offensive.

- For several months, discontent with the French war effort has been percolating through political circles in Paris, and these concerns have been amplified in recent weeks with the failure of the autumn offensives in Artois and Champagne, coupled with the imminent entry of Bulgaria into the war.  Today Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé, whose efforts to keep Bulgaria neutral have failed, resigns, which leads to a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies regarding the government of Prime Minister René Viviani.  Though the government wins the vote 372 to 9, the large number of abstentions indicate that Viviani's grip on power is slipping.

- The postponed attack of the German XXII Reserve Corps and the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps south of Belgrade goes in today, and the Germans, supported by a carefully planned and precise artillery bombardment, drive the Serbs back several kilometres and seize the Petlovo Hills.  The Austro-Hungarians, however, make significantly less progress, in part due to poor weather preventing support from monitors on the river.  Further east the advance of the German 11th Army continues: today 105th Division of IV Corps moves south of the Leštar Hills and 11th Bavarian Division reaches the outskirts of Požarevac.  On their left, the German X Reserve Corps seizes the Anatema Hills, which pushes the Serbs sufficiently behind the Danube River to allow the corps' heavy equipment to cross on pontoon bridges.  The most important development of the day, however, is beyond the control of the invading forces - the rain preventing river monitors from supporting the Austro-Hungarian attack is growing more intense.

- Today General Sarrail arrives at Salonika to take command of the Army of the Near East, where he receives instructions from the war minister to 'cover the lines of communication between Salonika and Serbia against the advance of Bulgarian forces.'  This means defending, first of all, the railway that connects Salonika and Skopje, running alongside the Vardar River.  Sarrail orders an infantry regiment and an artillery battalion to advance to the Strumica rail railway station a hundred kilometres north of Salonika and thirty kilometres into Serbian territory.  Here, the Bulgarian border is a dozen kilometres from the Salonika-Skopje railway (the village of Strumica itself is just inside Bulgaria), making a defence of the line here essential if the railway is to remain open to Entente forces.

October 11th, 1915

- Overnight the British 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards assault a German trench south of the Hohenzollern Redoubt known as the Loop, and after successfully capturing the position repulse a determined German counterattack.  Subsequently the battalion endured heavy German shell fire, one of which killed the commander of 1/Grenadier Guards.  Command of the latter is temporarily assumed by Major Harold Alexander of 2nd Battalion, who will rise to the rank of Field Marshal in the next great war and retire with an earldom.

- At 2pm French artillery fire in Artois intensifies prior to the infantry advance scheduled for 415pm.  Poor visibility, however, prevents accurate targeting of German positions while providing ample warning of the impending attack - by 4pm, the German IV, Guard, and Bavarian I Corps opposite the French lines report that their trenches are about to be assaulted.  When the French infantry go over the top, the Germans opposite fire flares into the air, the signal to their artillery batteries in the rear to shell No Man's Land.  The soldiers of the French XXI, XXXIII, and XII Corps suffer heavy casualties, and only between Givenchy and a point known as the Five Crossroads south of Giesler Hill do the French gain any ground whatsoever, and even here there is no possibility of a breakthrough.  After four hours General d'Urbal orders the attacks to cease, though he intends to resume the offensive once his infantry has had a chance to rest and when the Germans are less vigilant.

- South of Belgrade a planned attack by the German XXII Reserve Corps and Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps is postponed due to delays in getting heavy artillery across the Save and Danube Rivers and into position to provide supporting fire.  In Belgrade itself, Mackensen and Seeckt make a public visit to General Kövess of the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army to offer congratulations on the capture of the city.  The visit is typical of Mackensen's management of coalition warfare - he suppressese his annoyance at the dual communiques yesterday and makes a public show of amity with his Austro-Hungarian allies.  To the east, 168th Regiment captures the medieval Ottoman fortress at Semendria, while the rest of the German III Corps crosses the swollen Jezava River and fight their way into the nearby town of the same name as well as Lipe.

October 10th, 1915

- In reaction to the Bulgarian entry into the war, the Russian Black Seas Fleet bombards the Bulgarian ports of Varna and Evxinograd, encountering no opposition.

- In two days of heavy fighting the Austro-Hungarian XIX Corps remains pinned on the southern shore of the Save River, and due to heavy losses 205th Landsturm Brigade has been relieved south of Boljevci by 21st Landsturm Mountain Brigade.  To the east, the German XXII Reserve Corps and the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps push out from Belgrade, the former taking the heights at Dedinje and the latter capturing the Vk. Vračar ridge.

Meanwhile General Nikola Zhekov, chief of the Bulgarian General Staff, informs Mackensen today that the offensive of his army, scheduled to begin tomorrow, will be delayed until the 14th.  There is also an entirely predictable spat between the German and Austro-Hungarian high commands today.  After Mackensen yesterday signalled that German and Austro-Hungarian forces had captured Belgrade, both had issued communiques crediting only their soldiers with the success.  Mackensen is quite annoyed at the conflicting stories published by the two high commands, and his operations staff can only explain that both sides had specific victories in the Belgrade fighting that they accomplished on their own - capturing the Konak by the Germans and the Kalemegdan by the Austro-Hungarians.

October 9th, 1915

- Though the German attack at Loos yesterday has forced yet another postponement of the British offensive, Foch is unwilling to delay the attack of the French 10th Army any further, and insists that it go ahead as planned.  Now, however, the weather intervenes: the preliminary artillery bombardment scheduled to begin today is delayed by heavy fog which prevents accurate fire on German positions.  The infantry assault is thus put off until the 11th.

- With German forces approaching from the west and the Austro-Hungarian troops into the city fighting house-to-house, General Mihailo Živkovic, commanding the Serbian defenders at Belgrade, concludes that the city can no longer be held.  Shortly after midnight, he orders his exhausted battalions to abandon the city, retreating south to a line running approximately from Mirijevo east of Belgrade to Zarkova south of the city.  During the day, the German 43rd Reserve Divisions pushes into the city from the west, capturing the Konak, the official residence of King Peter I of Serbia, while 44th Reserve Division covers its southern flank and occupies the summit of Banovo Mountain.  The Austro-Hungarian 59th Division, meanwhile, fights its way through the streets of Belgrade and by this evening have captured the Kalemegdan.  For the second time in the war, Belgrade has fallen to the enemy; this time, however, there will be no miraculous reversal of fortune as there was in December of last year.

Kalemegdan castle after its capture by the Austro-Hungarian 59th Division, October 9th, 1915.

East of Belgrade, the German X Reserve Corps goes onto the attack today after its crossing of the Danube on the 7th, and make gradual progress in hilly terrain.  An attack by IV Reserve Corps, meanwhile, is delayed by morning fog, and when artillery fires prior to the attack, rescheduled for 230pm, a number of shells fall short and strike German positions.  The Serbs, taking advantage of the confusion, launch a counterattack along the entire front of IV Reserve Corps, taking advantage of cornfields to advance unseen.  In heavy fighting, the Serbs are finally driven off with the aid of artillery fire from the north bank and Temesziget Island.  A German counterattack makes slow progress, the Serbian trenches hidden by the same corn that had masked their earlier advance, but by this evening have captured Petka.  11th Bavarian Division has suffered 750 men over the past two days, but the Serbs defenders have lost approximately a thousand, and they are far less able to replace their casualties than the Germans.  Twenty miles to the west, the German III Corps makes its crossing of the Danube today, the last of 11th Army's three corps to do so.  6th Division secures a bridgehead opposite Kevevára, and corps commander General Ewald von Lochow decides to redeploy his other division - 25th Reserve - to follow the route of 6th Division, given the difficulties its lead regiment - 168th - has encountered attempting to cross at Semendria Island.

- As General Sarrail has yet to arrive at Salonika, General Maurice Bailloud, who had formerly commanded the French contingent on Gallipoli, has been in charge.  The orders he has received from his government since the landing show the extent to which the Entente, having committed to aiding the Serbs, had not worked out how precisely this was to be done.  On October 7th, Bailloud received instructions not to cross the border into Serbia.  Yesterday, this order was countered by another message ordering him to advance thirty kilometres into Serbia.  Today, Bailloud is again instructed not to enter Serbian territory.  Not surprising, the net result has been no advance beyond Salonika for the forces that have arrived since the 5th.

October 8th, 1915

- Near Loos the Germans launch a counterattack that catches the British and French largely by surprise, as poor weather has prevented aerial reconnaissance.  After a three-and-a-half-hour artillery bombardment, five regiments from IV Corps attack towards Loos from the east and the south.  Despite achieving surprise, however, the German infantry are unable to make progress, as heavy fog has prevented accurate preliminary shelling.  The northernmost elements of the French IX Corps, as well as 3rd Brigade of the British 1st Division, pour heavy fire into the German ranks, and they are unable to advance closer than forty yards to the Entente positions.  The Germans suffer three thousand casualties for no gain, but the attack does disrupt British preparations for their own attack.  Moreover, the preliminary attack on Gun Trench to the north still goes in today, but is a dismal failure.  The result is that the British offensive is yet again postponed, this time to October 13th.

- In Serbia attacks by the Austro-Hungarian XIX Corps fail to break out of the bridgehead across the Save River they won yesterday at Obrenovac.  To the east, the German 43rd Reserve Division of XXII Reserve Corps clears Big and Little Zigeuner Island in hard fighting, and crosses to the south bank of the Save River, while this evening 44th Reserve Division pushes eastward and seizes the forward slope of the Banovo Mountain, which overlooks Belgrade to the northeast.  At the Serbian capital itself, the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps endures another day of hard fighting.  Though Serbian artillery prevents reinforcements from crossing the Danube River during daylight hours, after sunset the remainder of the Austro-Hungarian 59th Division is able to get across.  Two Austro-Hungarian monitors - Leitha and Körös - fire at point-blank range into Serbian houses where defenders have holed up, and with this support the Austro-Hungarian infantry are able to push into Belgrade by this evening, fighting house to house in the streets east of the Kalemegdan.  In the German 11th Army, X Reserve Corps, after its successful crossing yesterday, spends today consolidating its bridgehead before further advances tomorrow.  On its western flank, IV Reserve Corps was not scheduled to cross until tomorrow, but its commander, Lieutenant-General Arnold von Winckler, decides to take advantage of X Reserve Corps' success, and pushes two of his three divisions across the Danube today.  Morning fog obscured the German pontoons as they brought the first wave across, and the forward Serbian positions are quickly overrun.  By this evening, 107th Division has seized the heights at Kostolac and 11th Bavarian Division, despite a fierce Serbian counterattack, is poised to seize the town of Petka.

German cavalry crossing the Danube River during the invasion of Serbia, October 1915.

- Since the end of the 2nd Battle of the Isonzo in early August, General Cadorna has been preparing for another offensive in the same sector, scheduled to be launched on October 21st, and which will become the 3rd Battle of the Isonzo.  His plan aims to capture the city of Görz, which has become a popular war aim among the Italian public.  To accomplish this, Cadorna is concentrating two-thirds of the Italian army on the lower Isonzo.  In the first phase of the offensive, the southern wing of the Italian 2nd Army and the southern wing of the Italian 3rd Army will attack north and south of Görz respectively.  In the second phase, the city itself would be assaulted from three sides and captured.  To support the offensive, Italian forces to the north will undertake diversionary attacks.  Cadorna has assembled 400 000 men for the operation, against less than 130 000 Austro-Hungarian defenders.

Cadorna has ordered the stockpiling of munitions to ensure an adequate preliminary bombardment, scheduled to begin on October 18th.  Italian production of artillery shells has remained woefully inadequate, however, and remain in short supply. Today the commander of the Italian army issues orders to limit fire to sixty rounds a day for light artillery, thirty for medium artillery, and twenty for heavy artillery.  Crucially, these restrictions will remain in force even after the battle begins.  As this will be insufficient to break the enemy's barbed wire defences, the infantry will have to cut the wire themselves.

Also today Italian aircraft undertake extensive aerial reconnaissance over enemy lines and drop bombs on the headquarters of the Austro-Hungarian III and VII Corps.  Perhaps the most significant impact of these raids are to confirm the opinion of Austro-Hungarian commanders that an offensive along the Isonzo River is imminent, which had been based on wireless intercepts of Italian officers and the heavy traffic seen behind Italian lines by observation posts on the mountains east of the Isonzo.  Surprise is something the Italians will definitely not have.