Nicknamed by the Italian soldiers “Padreterno”, Forte Luserna dates back to the times of the Great War and is one of the seven military fortifications, located at 1549 meters s.l.m, on the hill of Cima Campo.
It was one of the most powerful and equipped Austrian forts of the entire front, so much so that it was built of reinforced concrete to withstand the heaviest bombings. Built between 1908 and 1912, it had a trapezium shape and was equipped with four armored domes for artillery and an observatory dome and inside it was a garrison of 300 men. Despite its grandeur, on May 25, 1915, Forte Campo suffered, until May 28, a harsh bombing by Italian artillery, which continued to hit it with no less than 5,000 shells to cause the demolition of the armored towers.
This attack led the commander Emanuel Nebesar to gather the officers on the war council and decide the surrender of the fortress, thus raising the white flag.
Having communicated what happened to Fort Belvedere and Verle, the two nearby fortresses, in order to prevent the enemy’s advance for the conquest of Luserna, they began to fire anti-infantry shells (Shrapnels) towards Cima Campo succeeding in reaching the fort by pulling out the flag .
The commander Nebesar was subjected to the court martial but acquitted both in first and in second degree because the physical and psychic conditions of the particular moment excluded that it had been an act of cowardice, but rather a human weakness in a situation of absolute exceptionality bombing.
