Excerpt from ATTACKS
By Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

Units of the 3d Company of the 26th were withdrawn from the battle line and used for a continuous, if scant, garrison of the front.

In spite of the fierce hostile fire we succeeded in closing all gaps. My valiant orderly Unger offered to get help from the eastern bank of the Piave. He was a good swimmer and thought he had a good chance of getting through. Meanwhile dozens of hostile machine guns hammered against the walls of the castle. The hostile infantry lay densely massed ready for an attack about a hundred yards in front of us in ditches and plowed furrows. Again and again the battle cry: "Avanti, avanti!" was heard above the rattle of rifles and machine guns. The rapid fire of the good men of the Styrian and Wurttemberg Mountain troops prevented the enemy mustering sufficient courage to rise and advance. The enemy's fire front widened.

During this battle, Technical Sergeant Dobelmann, severely wounded, dragged himself across the field in the vicinity of the sawmill and into our lines. The splendid fellow had received a chest wound in the night battle on the road a mile north of Fae, but had been able to escape capture in the darkness and was able to make his way back to us.
I held a few riflemen ready in case the superior enemy succeeded in penetrating our thin line at some place. Two soldiers still held the fifty Italian officers prisoner upstairs in the castle; the latter, knowing that their own troops were near at hand, became very bellicose, but did not dare attack the two soldiers.

The shots striking the north front of the castle rattled like hail. Most of the Styrians were in position at a wall on the north edge of Fae and fired shot after shot—even if unaimed—over the wall at the enemy. Whenever the Italians shouted their battle cry we increased our fire. This sort of fighting naturally required immense supplies of ammunition. Our supplies would have been soon exhuasted had we been unable to fall back on the abundant weapons and stores of ammunition in the castle yard—the booty of the Huber-Hohnecker scouting expedition in the afternoon. In the course of the battle, the rearming of our forward elements with Italian guns and ammunition was accomplished with the help of my few mountain troops. It was none the less unfortunate that the heavy machine-gun platoon in position on both sides of the road had only fifty cartridges for each gun.