ON THE MARMOLADA GLACIER, Italy, 9 September 2003 — For decades, a frozen labyrinth of ice tunnels lay buried deep within the Marmolada glacier on the crest of the Dolomite mountains, hacked out by Austrian troops during World War II.

But this year’s fierce heat wave in Europe has melted the glacier so quickly that the battered wooden frames which lined dormitories and storerooms have fully emerged into the sunshine, probably the last remnants of the City of Ice.

One small structure remains upright now precariously perched on the newly exposed scree slopes, its old timbers still damp.

“It’s sad, to think it’s ending like this,” said Mario Fornaro, the director of a small museum that houses war relics recovered from the glacier over the years, zipped up in an anorak against the cold wind at an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,840 feet).

“We used to set off skiing from here all summer long. Now look at it,” said Italian Alpine soldier Moreno Sandri as he surveyed the scene from the head of the Marmolada, rivulets of melting ice trickling past his boots.

“If it goes on like this, there will be nothing left of the glacier in 10 years’ time. The climate is putting the glacier out of its misery,” he said.

Heat Wave

Across the Alps, this year’s exceptional heat has sped up the melting of glaciers, turned summer ski slopes to slush and closed paths on peaks like Mont Blanc after huge chunks of rock came crashing down, apparently weakened by the melting of the permafrost that helps to hold the mountains together.

Such scenes would have been barely imaginable for the thousands of men who fought in the rarefied air of the Marmolada, fearing death by avalanche or hypothermia as much as from the bombs and bayonets of the enemy.

At the time of the war, the roughly 12 km (7.5 miles) of tunnels that made up the City of Ice were estimated to have been up to 50 meters (165 feet) deep in the glacier, many of them carved out by soldiers who wriggled down into its crevasses.

Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1915 in an attempt to capture areas it had long claimed.

In a desperate attempt to break the Austrian line, Italian troops captured Austrian trenches on the slopes below the Marmolada.

But they never smashed the City of Ice before Italy was forced to retreat from the entire region in 1917.

As the Italians withdrew, the Austrians rushed down the mountain in pursuit, leaving behind a host of weapons, ammunition and personal items which are now stored in the Marmolada’s museum, under a cable-car station.

They tell of the brutality and humanity of men at war: spiked clubs to finish off the enemy’s wounded, the hacksaws of field surgeons, a postcard — its message long smudged away — found lovingly tucked inside a pillow.

Last Mystery

Despite the concerns about the impact of global warming on the Alps, the retreat of the glacier might yet help resolve one of the last mysteries of the Marmolada.

As the Italians tried to punch through the Austrian positions, a group of soldiers bore their own tunnel beneath the City of Ice, planning to pack it with explosives and blow up the enemy’s otherwise impenetrable network.

But the Austrians heard the Italians digging and blew up the Italian tunnel first, killing 15 soldiers.

No one knows whether the victims were buried all together within the collapsed tunnel, or whether they were instead caught at its mouth by the blast, scattering their remains irretrievably over the mountainside.

The regional Veneto government has earmarked 25,000 euros ($27,040) to fund a search for the bodies in the scree which is littered with rags from sandbags, coils of barbed wire thick with rust and other debris of the war.

“If they are there, then it is only just that we give them a decent burial,” museum director Fornaro said. “We shouldn’t just leave them in the rubble.”

Not everyone agrees. Relatives of the dead men, painstakingly traced by Fornaro’s predecessor Mario Bartoli, turned out to be largely uninterested in the search plan.

Even some military men, proud of the Italians’ courage, say a commemorative plaque would be more suitable and that the soldiers’ remains will never be found.

“In my opinion, they have been up there for so long, why disturb them now?” said soldier Sandri, gazing out over the soaring Dolomite mountains and the distant peaks of Austria.

“What better burial place could there possibly be for them?”