Corno di Bo’. Tunnel Number Five. The Tunnel of the Dead. Known to history by several names, today it is one of many attractions on highway SR 249 in northern Italy, and a popular spot for rock-climbers looking to tie on and grope their way up a steep cliff face. But in late April 1945 its blood-soaked limestone walls were the scene of the most concentrated death and destruction in the history of the 10th Mountain Division. This is part one of a three-part series about this tunnel, the horrific events which took place within it, and its recent archaeological exploration.
Lago di Garda, the largest lake in Italy, was carved out by glaciers during the last ice age. The southern portion of the lake is broad and shallow, but a protruding finger of water twenty miles long and two miles wide points roughly northeast. The water in the northern part of the lake is over one thousand feet deep. Tall, almost sheer mountains press in on either shore. The 7,277 foot Monte Baldo descends directly into the water in places on the eastern shore, and the road north passes through eight tunnels carved through the cliffs, numbered by the US Army one through six from south to north. Two of the shorter tunnels were not numbered.
Early in 1945, the Germans realized that their positions in the Apennine Mountains would inevitably be overrun and that a defense further north would become necessary. Efforts were made to strengthen a line of fortifications along Lago di Garda which dated back to the First World War. Among the improvements to the defenses of the tunnels along the lakeshore were embrasures for machineguns which were carved into the rock, as well as a series of bunkers. One such bunker, of three rooms and a firing slit, was carved into the wall of Tunnel Number Five.
The Allies did indeed overwhelm the German forces in the Apennines in mid-April of 1945. By the end of the month, the remnants of German Army Group C were scrambling toward the Austrian border with the 10th Mountain Division and the rest of the Allied forces in Italy following in rapid persuit. The Germans assembled a force to man the defenses they had built in the foothills of the Alps. The northern end of Lago di Garda was defended by a number of 88mm guns, but they were not the only German forces at the head of the lake. Commander of the XIV.Panzerkorps, Gen. Frido von Senger und Etterlin recalled that,
At this juncture two of the former divisional staffs – from the 94th Inf. Div. and 8 Mountain Div. – turned up again. They organized a front from Lake Garda to the Pasubio pass with an odd assortment of troops, mostly from other units. From the rear some fresh troops in small numbers had been brought up, consisting of a Parachute Officers’ School and an SS Mountain School. Consequently it was to some extent possible again to provide infantry forces for occupying the Adige valley and the mountains between it and Lake Garda…
Every soldier with whom one spoke told the same tale as in similar situations in the past: he had been “over-run” or “outflanked,” had fought his way through, and now wanted to carry out the order to proceed to the assembly-point in the supply area. It was never possible to discover who had given such an order. Nor was it possible to assemble these stragglers directly behind a new defensive line among unfamiliar troop units. Every soldier abhorred the idea of being cut off from his mail and, in general, from his military home circle.
Nevertheless these infantrymen gave no impression of demoralization…In cases where an organized order of battle no longer existed at the front they were accustomed to going back to their supply areas, which in their view was the only way to freshen them up for further action.
After a catastrophe of this kind, which involves the breaking-up of whole formations, long marches, swimming across rivers and many sleepless nights, there is only one way to deal with the exhausted infantry, and that is to follow the instinct of the ordinary soldier and to re-form the troops far back in the supply area.
We had occupied the so-called Blue Line, where for the first time in the long years of war we found really powerful and deep fortifications. They dated from the First World War!
The SS Mountain School to which Gen. von Senger referred was the 803 faculty and students of the Gebirgskampfschule der Waffen SS in Predazzo. They were pressed into service, and were spread out at various places on either side of Lago di Garda. On April 28, a contingent from the SS Gebirgskampfschule was working its way northward up the lakeshore just ahead of the 10th Mountain Division, using explosive charges to turn the two southernmost tunnels into impassable piles of collapsed rock. The commander of one element ordered a seventeen-year old soldier from his unit to move ahead to the tunnel at Corno di Bo’ to set explosive charges so as to demolish the tunnel after they passed. The boy protested, saying that he had no experience in demolitions. The officer insisted, and sent the boy up the road with explosives and instructions to set the timer for one hour.
The young man rigged the charges and set the timer to the best of his abilities, but either through faulty equipment or his own inexperience, the charges detonated after only a few minutes. The explosion occurred around 1700 hours, as the last platoon of the SS mountain troops were passing through the tunnel pushing a 20mm gun. All of them were killed instantly, but the boy who had set the charges had already moved north toward the town of Torbole.
The Italian civilians in the towns of Riva and Torbole, at the northern end of Lago di Garda, clearly heard the loud explosion that killed the German soldiers inside the tunnel. One of them snapped this photograph of the large plume of smoke and dust created by the blast. (Click photo to view larger)
When the Americans of the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment reached Tunnel Number One, they found its entrance destroyed with demolition charges. The Germans opened fire with artillery from emplacements on the opposite shore, and Allied artillery was brought up to provide counter-battery fire. An amphibious operation under fire using DUKWs finally succeeded in ferrying the mountain troops around the collapsed tunnels. They bivouacked for the night on the steep slope next to the road in an intermittent rain.
On the morning of April 29, the 3rd Battalion of the 86th, led by L Company, advanced up the road to take the remaining tunnels. It was then that Tunnel Number Five was given its macabre moniker. L Company’s 3rd Platoon was tasked with capturing the tunnels. It is important to note again that the road passed through tunnels that were not among the six numbered on the army maps, with a result that the troops themselves often did not have accurate information about what tunnel they were in. Sgt. Bob Krear recalled,
We moved through tunnel four (actually it was a tunnel among those not numbered between Tunnel Four and Tunnel Five), which was short and free of demolitions, but we could not get out of it. The north end was covered by machine gun fire from an embrasure carved out of the solid granite just to one side of tunnel number five ahead. M Company moved up a 50-calibre machine gun and effectively sealed off the embrasure with deadly fire. This permitted riflemen to run forward and toss grenades into the doorway of the embrasure, killing the eight-man crew.
Tunnel number five was now ours, but there was not one of us who was not shocked by what we found in it and who was not familiar with the reason why it was thereafter known as the “tunnel of the dead.”
As we crawled over the rock debris and partially buried and still smoldering bodies we thought we had never seen a greater carnage. At least 40 Germans had died, and pieces of men were scattered as far as 50 feet out of the tunnel to the north. By this time in the war we were all used to the sight of dead men, both theirs and ours, so I doubt if any of us were horrified by the sight. Perhaps we were even pleased, thinking that these were German soldiers who would not be trying to kill us in the tunnels ahead, and in the town of Torbole at the head of the lake. Anyway, this is exactly what we would have done to them if they had not done it to themselves.
But the Tunnel of the Dead would see even more destruction in the hours to come.
This blog is part of a larger body of research culminating in the publication of the book ‘Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86th Regiment, 10th Mountain Division 1943-1945’ which is available in select bookstores and on amazon.
Bailey, Everett C. personal interview by author. December 24, 2010.
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Italiasociale.net. Unita’ Waffen-SS in Italia: Aprile 1945. accessed January 13, 2016. http://www.italiasociale.net/storia07/storia171107-1.html
Jenkins, McKay. The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of America’s First Mountain Soldiers and the Assault on Hitler’s Europe. New York: Random House, 2003.
Kiser, Patrick. e-mail messages to author. 2016.
Krear, H. Robert. The Journal of a US Army Mountain Trooper in World War II. Estes Park, CO: Desktop Publishing by Jan Bishop, 1993.
Meinke, Albert H., Jr., Mountain Troops and Medics: Wartime Stories of a Frontline Surgeon in the US Ski Troops. Kewadin, MI: Rucksack Publishing Company, 1993.
Valente, Luca. Dieci giorni di guerra: 22 aprile – 2 maggio 1945: la ritirata tedesca e l’inseguimento degli Alleati in Veneto e Trentino. Verona, Italy: Cierre edizioni, 2006.
Von Senger und Etterlin, General Frido. Neither Fear Nor Hope. Translated by George Malcom. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964.
Wellborn, Charles. History of the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment in Italy. Edited by Barbara Imbrie in 2004. Denver, CO: Bradford-Robinson Printing Co.,1945.
(Click image to view larger)
The Italian civilians in the towns of Riva and Torbole, at the northern end of Lago di Garda, clearly heard the loud explosion that killed the German soldiers inside the tunnel. One of them snapped this photograph of the large plume of smoke and dust created by the blast. (Click photo to view larger)
Elio Pasquali