Caporetto — where Hemingway's retreat began and the Soča turns emerald in a gorge of WWI graves
Kobarid is a small town at the confluence of the Soča and Nadižza rivers in the Julian Alps of western Slovenia — known to Italians as Caporetto, the site of the catastrophic 1917 Battle of Caporetto that formed the setting for Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. The Kobarid Museum (winner of the Council of Europe Museum Prize) tells the story of the Isonzo Front, the bloodiest mountain campaign of WWI. The Soča river here is a brilliant translucent turquoise-green from calcium carbonate suspended in the glacial meltwater — one of the most photogenic rivers in Europe.
The Battle of Caporetto (24 October 1917) was one of the most decisive battles of WWI — a combined Austro-Hungarian and German offensive broke through the Italian lines at Kobarid after two years of static Isonzo Front fighting, causing the Italian Army's largest military disaster of the war (300,000 prisoners, 10,000 dead, 400km retreat) and precipitating the entry of American forces. Hemingway drove ambulances for the Italian Red Cross on this front in 1917 before being wounded near Fossalta; the experience became the raw material for A Farewell to Arms (1929). The Kobarid Museum opened in…