In the days that followed the Eighth Battle of the Isonzo the Russian prisoners and the veterans of the Austro-Hungarian armies went ahead with the construction of a new defensive line onMount Ermada. The risks that were faced at the start of October had alarmed the Habsburg military leaders: the eventual conquest of Trieste by the Italian army would have changed many things on the front on the Isonzo.
At the end of the month, taking advantage of an improvement in weather conditions, the Italians resumed their bombing on enemy lines. These attacks were intensified on 01st November in the zone of Doberdò and Opacchiasella (today known as Opatje Selo). The Third Army with a concentration of 200,000 men within a few kilometres, attacked shortly before noon and succeeded in making the Austro-Hungarians retreat by a few kilometres. Dosso Faiti, a hill at an altitude of 430 metres and one of the main hills in the region, was lost by the men of Borojevic on 03rd November thanks to action by the Tuscany Battalion. The Austro-Hungarian general knew that if the attack would continue, it was inevitable that the Italians would be able to break through. The last reserve battalion was sent to Height 464, near Faiti, to try to repel the advance by the Italian soldiers (who were six times stronger). With a determined resistance, the peak was not taken and once again the front was able to withstand these attacks.
On 04th NovemberCadorna decided to suspend immediately the military operations. At 39,000 the number of men who were out of action was too high for those few days of war. This choice was also dictated by the exhaustion of his soldiers and their morale which in those days was somewhat low. Since the end of August at least 130,000 men had been killed, wounded or captured. By now protests and harsh criticism had arisen from various areas on the methods of fighting that were being used and on the treatment that was reserved for soldiers. Carlo Salsa, a future journalist who in those days was an infantry lieutenant deployed on the Karst, wrote: "The most demoralizing thing that breaks you down is not death. Something that is even worse is dying so uselessly, for nothing. This is not death for the motherland: it is death that is brought about by the stupidity of certain orders and by the cowardice of certain commanding officers." (Carlo Salsa, Trincee, Confidenze di un fante in Mark Thompson, La Guerra Bianca, Il Saggiatore, Milan, 2008, page 240).
On his part, Cadorna replied by a harsher censorship and by inflicting even harsher penalties for those who expressed negative or pessimistic judgments about the way that the war was unfolding.
