around the firmly planted Italian flag. It was the Divisional Band of
the four Regiments which had stormed these heights. On the flanks of the
mountain, along the new lines in the valley beneath, along the trenches
half-way up San Gabriele, Italian soldiers raised a cry of startled joy.
Below the peak an Italian Regiment held the line within forty yards of
the enemy, crouching low in the shallow trenches. Their Colonel leaped
to his feet and his voice rang out, "Soldiers, to your feet! Attention!"
All along the trench the soldiers, with a swift thrill of emotion,
sprang to their feet. Then again the Colonel cried, "My soldiers, let us
cry aloud in the face of the enemy, 'Long live Italy! Long live the
King! Long live the Infantry!'" Loud and long came the cheers, echoing
and re-echoing from the rocks, taken up and repeated by others who heard
them, first near at hand, then far away, echoing and spreading through
the night, like the swelling waves of a great sea.

The Austrians opened fire on Monte Santo. But the music still went on.
The Marcia Reale was finished, but now in turn the Hymn of Garibaldi and
the Hymn of Mameli, historic battle songs of Italian liberty, pealed
forth to the stars, loud above the bursting of the shells. And many
Italian eyes, from which the atrocious sufferings of this war had never
yet drawn tears, wept with a proud, triumphant joy. And as the last
notes died away upon the night air, a great storm of cheers broke forth
afresh from the Italian lines. The moon was now riding high in the
heavens, and every mountain top, seen from below, was outlined with a
sharp-cut edge against the sky.

Four days after, not far from this same spot, General Capello, the
Commander of the Italian Second Army, decorated with the Silver Medal
for Valour some of the heroes of the great victory. Among these was a
civilian, a man over military age. It was Toscanini, Italy's most famous
musical conductor. It was he who, charged with the organisation of
concerts for the troops, had found himself in this sector of the Front
when Monte Santo fell, and, hearing the news, had demanded and obtained
permission to climb the conquered mountain. He reached the summit on the
evening of the 26th and, by a strange chance, found his way among the
rocks and the ruins of the convent, to the place where the band was
playing. His presence had upon the musicians the same effect which the
presence of a great General has upon faithful troops. They crowded round
him, fired with a wild enthusiasm. Then Toscanini took command of what
surely was one of the strangest concerts in the world, played in the
moonlight, in an hour of glory, on a mountain top, which to the Italians
had become an almost legendary name, to an audience of two contending
Armies, amid the rattle of machine guns, the rumble of cannon, and the
crashes of exploding shells.

"Our tricolour is waving from the summit of Monte Santo!"

If the souls of poets be immortal and know what still passes in this
world, be sure that the soul of Swinburne sings again to-day, from hell
or heaven, the Song of the Standard.

   "This is thy banner, thy gonfalon, fair in the front of thy fight.
   Red from the hearts that were pierced for thee, white as thy
                                                       mountains are white,
   Green as the spring of thy soul everlasting, whose life-blood is light.
   Take to thy bosom thy banner, a fair bird fit for the nest,
   Feathered for flight into sunrise or sunset, for eastward or west,
   Fledged for the flight everlasting, but held yet warm to thy breast.
   Gather it close to thee, song-bird or storm-bearer, eagle or dove,
   Lift it to sunward, a beacon beneath to the beacon above,
   Green as our hope in it, white as our faith in it, red as our love."

CHAPTER XVII

THE CONQUEST OF THE BAINSIZZA PLATEAU

The Italian advance on the Middle Isonzo in the early days of the August
offensive reached a depth of six miles on a front of eleven miles. The
Italians had swept across the Bainsizza Plateau, and had gained
observation and command, though not possession, of the Valley of
Chiapovano, the main Austrian line of communication and supply in this
sector. This advance and the resumption of the war of movement raised,
for the moment, tremendous expectations, which were destined, alas, to
die away without fulfilment.

The passage of the Isonzo, here a deep cleft in the mountains, from
Plava to above Canale, had been accomplished by the combined skill and
valour of Infantry, Artillery and Engineers. The preliminary work of the
Engineers in roadmaking on the western side of the river had been, as
always, worthy of the highest praise. A great mass of bridging material
had had to be accumulated in the valley, alongside camouflaged roads.
The Austrians must have been on their guard, but it seems probable that
they did not expect a big attack to be made here. For they were fully
conscious of the natural strength of their positions.

First to cross the river on the night of the attack were boats carrying
Engineers and detachments of Arditi. As they crossed, the river gorge
was full of mist and they were not detected. But when the work of
bridging began, and sounds of hammering and the dragging of planks into
position could be clearly heard, suddenly all along the further bank the
Austrian machine guns began to spit fire, and red rockets went up
calling for the Artillery barrage. Many boats were hit and sank, and the
Bridging Detachments suffered severe casualties. One bridge, half built,
was set on fire, and one could see dark shadows, lit up by the glare
amid the darkness, darting forward to extinguish the flames. Fourteen
bridges were thrown across under heavy fire, and, as the Infantry began
to cross, Platoon after Platoon, the Austrian Machine Gunners fired at
the sound of their footsteps, and many Italians fell, especially
officers leading their men. But the crossing went on and, when dawn
broke, the attackers had a firm footing on the left bank of the river.
They swept round the flanks of those machine guns which had not yet been
put out of action, and making use of the subterranean passages which the
enemy had pierced in the cliffs for sheltered communication between the
higher and the lower levels of the mountain, began to pour forth upon
the crest of the ridge which overlooks the river. Then, as the advance
continued, the Austrian right wing above Canale gave way in confusion
and the Italians pressed forward on to the Bainsizza Plateau.

But their difficulties were tremendous. When they left the valley of the
Isonzo behind them, they entered a waterless land, without springs for
some four miles. In the early stages of the battle all water for the
troops had to be brought up by mules, and likewise all food, ammunition
and medical supplies, until the Engineers could get to work with
road-building on the left bank of the river. The Bainsizza Plateau
itself, lying amid a mass of barren mountains, contains woods, pastures,
springs, small villages, a few roads and many tracks. The Italians swept
over it on the 21st and 22nd of August, but soon found themselves once
more in difficult country. In the days that followed the advance was
slower and more spasmodic, but it still continued. By the 27th, 25,000
Austrian prisoners had been taken, together with a great quantity of
material, and several whole Austrian Divisions had ceased to exist.

It had been a wonderful feat of arms, finely conceived by the Staff,
magnificently executed by the rank and file. It opened out a great vista
of new possibilities, but, for the moment, it was over. Before any
further advance was practicable, the positions won had to be
consolidated, roads had to be built, dumps and stores of every kind to
be moved forward.

In a village on the Bainsizza Plateau, half wrecked by shell fire, two
old peasants were sitting outside their house. Austrian shells whistled
through the air and burst a few hundred yards away. "These are not for
us," said one of the old men to an Italian soldier, "the shells and the
war are for the soldiers, not the civilians."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIGHTING DIES DOWN

On the 28th of August the offensive was really beginning again. We were
firing on San Marco at a slow rate from six a.m. for an hour, then
"vivace" from seven till noon, and at noon we lifted and continued
vivace. San Marco was not rocky, and the trenches there should be
bombardable into pulp. In the early morning from Sant' Andrea the hills
all round were clearly outlined, except where some long belts of
motionless, white, low-lying cloud partly hid the Faiti-Stoll range.
Later, with the sun up, a warm haze hid everything. Firing continued
heavy till six p.m., and then slowed down. The attack on San Marco had
failed.

Next day there was a good deal of shelling and some torrential showers.
We set fire to some woods on the lower slopes of San Daniele, with a
high wind blowing.

The Battery's good luck continued. On the 30th, while my Gun Detachment
were at breakfast, a 5.9 burst in their shelter trench, at the moment
unoccupied, and covered every one with showers of loose earth. All the
breakfast vanished, and our shells were thrown about like driftwood in a
storm. But no ammunition was exploded and no one was hurt. Raven, who
had been up Sabotino that day, told us that "San Gabriele is tottering."
Our offensive seemed to have completely come to an end on the Carso and
in the Vippacco Valley. But we were still hammering away at San Marco
and San Gabriele, at intervals of a few days at a time. On the 2nd of
September San Gabriele was still "tottering," on the morning of the 4th
it was reported taken, on the 6th we heard that it had been taken, lost
and retaken, the Arno Brigade having distinguished themselves by some
wonderful bombing. Cadorna's objective now, it was said, was Lubiana,
and not Trieste. The Major and I both agreed that the Entente ought to
put every available man and tank on to this Front and go for Vienna. On
the 8th Raven told us that the top of San Gabriele was held, but not the
lower slopes nor Santa Catarina, which were still precariously supplied
from behind San Marco. A few days later we lost the top of San Gabriele,
and the attack upon it was not renewed.

Then followed quiet times, except for activity by Austrian Trench
Mortars against our trenches on Hill 126. We established direct
telephonic communication from the Battery to the Infantry Brigade
Headquarters in order to provide rapid retaliation, and we made several
Reconnaissances to try to locate Trench Mortars in the tangle of broken
ground through which the enemy line ran.

On the 17th we were warned to be ready to move at short notice to the
neighbourhood of Monfalcone, for a big push against the Hermada in three
weeks' time. Battery positions were chosen, but we never went. Instead a
rumour began to spread that all British Batteries were leaving Italy and
going East. It was said that the War Office had the wind up about the
Turks. An international tug of war was going on behind the scenes. On
the afternoon of the 28th we were told on high authority that our
movements were still undecided, but the Battery was inspected that day
by General Capello, the victor of Bainsizza, who looked like an Eastern
potentate, and was heard to say that he wanted as many British Batteries
as he could get, to increase the gun power of the Second Army. That
evening, however, our fate was said to be unofficially decided. We, with
the rest of Raven's Group, five Batteries in all, were to stay in Italy,
the other two Groups were to go away. It was not till the 3rd of October
that we received definite orders on the subject. The other Groups went
to Egypt and a couple of Batteries, after three months of doing nothing
in Cairo, came back to Italy again. They had at any rate found a little
employment for some of our surplus shipping and they had missed some
queer experiences in Italy meantime.

It was also announced that we were not moving down to Monfalcone, but
were probably remaining in our present positions for the winter. We
therefore began systematically to prepare winter quarters. The Italian
Corps Commander in a special Order of the Day expressed his satisfaction
that our Group was remaining under his command.

On the 5th I got up at four o'clock in the morning and carried out a
Front Line Reconnaissance with Sergeant Cotes, the No. 1 of my gun, and
Avoglia, an Italian Sergeant Major attached to our Battery, rather a
sleek person, who had been a _maître-d'hôtel_ at Brighton before the
war. We went along the front line trenches on Hill 126, recently
captured. These trenches ran beside the river and were now in fine
condition, great repairs and reconstruction having been carried out
during the past three weeks. It was here that Austrian Trench Mortars
were active. They were firing when we arrived and caused some
casualties. As it grew light, a strong Austrian patrol was seen moving
about in No Man's Land, and it was thought that a raid might be coming.
The order "Stand to" was given, and the Infantry came swarming out of
their dug-outs, a crowd of youths, some very handsome, with almost
Classical Roman features, and older men, sturdy and bearded. They
densely manned the parapet, with fixed bayonets and hand grenades. The
machine gun posts were also manned. But nothing happened!

A little later an Austrian was seen to emerge from cover in No Man's
Land, about a hundred yards away from us, and run towards our trenches,
throwing away his rifle and shouting some unintelligible words. He was
sick of the war and wanted to surrender. But a young Italian recruit, in
the trenches for the first time, quivering with excitement and eagerness
to distinguish himself, not realising the man's motive, fired at him
through a peephole. He missed, but the Austrian turned and doubled back
like a rabbit to his own lines, where I suppose he was shot, poor brute,
by his own people. I was standing quite close to the young recruit when
he fired. No one rebuked him, but a Corporal patiently explained things
to him. We smiled at one another, and I wished him "auguri" and went on
up the hill.

The Austrian snipers were busy, and another Italian standing close to
me, looking out slantwise through a peephole, was shot through the jaw.
He was bandaged up, profusely bleeding, and went stoically down the
hill, supported by a companion, leaving a red trail along the wooden
duck-boards that paved the trench.

I went down two saps which the Italians had pushed out, one to within
twenty yards, the other to within ten yards, of the Austrian front line.
Here every one spoke in a low whisper or by signs. They warned me to
keep well down, as the Austrians hated khaki worse even than
"grigio-verde," as one is always apt to hate third parties who butt in
against one in what one conceives to be a purely private quarrel.

But I went back armed with some useful information regarding the
position of those Austrian Trench Mortars.

CHAPTER XIX

A LULL BETWEEN TWO STORMS

From the beginning of October the Battery were hard at work on their
winter quarters. We had two large dining and recreation huts for the
men, one for the Right Section and one for the Left, fitted up with long
wooden tables and benches. These huts were dug into the bank, one on
either side of the road leading up from the Battery position to Pec
village. The dug-outs were improved and made watertight and the
Officers' Mess and sleeping huts were moved up from the river bank into
the Battery position itself. Everything was very comfortable and handy.

We maintained close relations with an Italian Battery next door
commanded by a certain Captain Romano. His men helped us in putting up
our huts, which were of Italian design, and we had frequent exchanges of
hospitality. Romano was a Regular officer, about 28 years old, with
twinkling brown eyes and a voice like a foghorn even when speaking from
a short distance away, but a fine singer. He had a wonderful collection
of photographs, was a good Gunner and popular with his men.

On the 9th I spent the night in Lecce O.P. on Hill 123, overlooking
Hills 126 and 94. It was named after the Lecce Brigade who made it, one
of the best Brigades in the Italian Army. When they were in front of
us, we saw a good deal of them. Now the Parma Brigade were holding the
line and the British officer in the O.P. used to take his meals at the
Brigade Headquarters. Things were rather active that evening. At
half-past five in the afternoon the enemy opened a heavy bombardment,
increasing to a pitch of great fury, on our front and support trenches.
Our own lines down below me were blotted out from sight by dense clouds
of crashing, flashing smoke. Just before six the Italian Brigadier asked
me for a heavy barrage from all the British Batteries. A big
counter-bombardment was now working up from our side. I spoke on the
telephone to Raven, who told me that all our Batteries were firing
"_double vivace_." At a quarter past six the Austrians attacked. There
was a terrific rattle of Italian machine gun fire, almost drowning the
sound of the heavier explosions, and a stream of rockets went up from
our front line calling for more barrage. The attack was beaten off by
machine guns and hand grenades. A few Austrians reached our parapet, but
none got into our trenches.

Firing died down about a quarter to seven, and the Brigadier came up to
the O.P., very pleased with the support we had rendered, and asked that
a slow rate of fire might be kept up. Later on an Austrian telephone
message was overheard, which suggested that the attack was to be renewed
just before dawn, after a gas attack. We kept on the alert, but nothing
happened. Two of our Batteries went on firing at a slow rate all night.
When dawn broke, it was evident that our bombardment had been very
destructive. The enemy's trenches were knocked to pieces; uprooted
trees, planks, sandbags and dead bodies lay about in confusion. It was
thought that owing to our fire some Austrian units, which were to have
taken part in the attack, could not, and others would not, do so, in
spite of a special issue of rum and other spirits. I saw also,
motionless amid the Austrian wire, a figure in Italian uniform, one of a
patrol who had gone out four nights before, and had not returned.

On the 12th I went out with a Sergeant, a Signaller and Corporal
Savogna, a Canadian Italian, on a Front Line Reconnaissance on the
northern side of the Vippacco, in the Second Army area. The day was
wonderfully clear and we could see the everlasting snows beyond Cadore.
We went through Rupa to Merna and, being evidently spotted, were shelled
with 4.2's and forced to proceed along a muddy communication trench knee
deep in water. At Raccogliano Mill we visited the Headquarters of the
Bergamo Brigade, which was holding the line. A guide took us along the
front line, which had been considerably advanced here in August and
September, and again by a successful local attack a few days before. We
went down one _Caverna_ in which, on the occasion of this last attack, a
Magyar officer and 25 men surrendered. The Austrian sentry, also a
Magyar, had been fastened by the leg to the doorpost outside the
entrance to the dug-out. In the Italian bombardment one of his feet was
blown away, but his own people had done nothing for him. Now his dead
body lay out in the open behind the new Italian front line.

On the 14th Jeune went on leave to England, no one having any
expectation that anything of importance was likely to happen in the
near future. In his absence I acted as Second-in-Command of the Battery.

On the 19th we heard that the Italian High Command was preparing another
big offensive from the Bainsizza against the Ternova Plateau, and the
same day the Intelligence Report contained the information that a series
of German Divisions had been seen detraining at Lubiana since the
beginning of October, and that, owing to the Russian collapse, a
thousand Austrian guns had been moved across from the Russian to the
Isonzo Front since the middle of September. We had noticed a perceptible
increase in the enemy's Artillery activity for some time, but this, we
thought at the time, was purely defensive. There had also been a week of
heavy rains, but the Vippacco, after rising rapidly and threatening to
flood us all out, fell eighteen inches in one night. It swept away a
number of Italian bridges, however, from Merna and Raccogliano further
up stream, and we saw pieces of these rushing past in the swift current.

On the 21st the Major and I motored to Palmanova and bought some winter
clothing at the Ordnance. An Austrian twelve-inch howitzer, whom we had
christened "Mr Pongo," was shelling all day at intervals, chiefly in the
back areas. An unpleasant beast, we agreed, who wanted smothering!

On the 22nd it was evident, from the Austrian shelling, that quite a
number of fresh heavy howitzers, both twelve- and fifteen-inch, had
appeared behind the Austrian lines. A few, no doubt, of those thousand
guns from Russia! Listening to their shells whistling over one's head
like express trains, and to their (happily distant) deep crashes on
percussion, one realised very vividly the immediate military effects of
the Russian collapse. We heard that the Italian offensive was not coming
off after all.

On the 23rd we heard that a big Austrian attack was expected last night
and might come that night instead. We received orders to clean up and
prepare, in case of necessity, the old position at Boschini on San
Michele, which the Battery had occupied when they first arrived in
Italy. This, I thought, seemed rather panic-stricken. Romano's Battery
had similar orders. It would be annoying to leave our present position
after all the work put into it to make it habitable for the winter. But
I noted that the atmosphere was tinged with apprehension.

PART IV

THE ITALIAN RETREAT AND RECOVERY

CHAPTER XX

THE BEGINNING OF THE ENEMY OFFENSIVE

On the morning of October 24th soon after nine o'clock the enemy
launched a big attack against the Third Army Front, especially violent
between Faiti and the Vippacco, and renewed it in the afternoon. But he
gained no ground. All through the previous night and all that day till
evening the bombardment on both sides was heavy. We had not fired during
the night but began at seven in the morning and went on throughout the
day. A message came in that the enemy would probably shell Batteries for
four hours with gas shell, starting with irritant gas and going on to
poison. He had already employed these tactics up north, as we learned
later. Gas alert was on all night and we were listening strainedly for
soft bursts. Heavy rain came down steadily all day, and everything was
drenched and dripping. The spaces between our huts filled with water,
and needed continual baling out. But when gas was expected, one welcomed
heavy rain[1] and high winds and loud explosions from bursting shells.

[Footnote 1: It was not till a later date that gases were employed, the
effects of which were increased by rain.]

Between nine and ten p.m. I heard a series of soft bursts just across
the river and arranged with Romano's Battery for mutual alarms if any
gas should come too near. An hour later I was relieved in the Command
Post and turned in. As I was undressing, I heard the wind rising again
and the telephonists next door baling out their dug-out. We were keeping
up a desultory fire all night to harass any further attacks that might
be attempted. The Major, who had been out on a Front Line Reconnaissance
that morning in the neighbourhood of Merna, had come in for some very
heavy shelling and returned very weary.

The next day, the 25th, was at least fine; it was even rather sunny. We
did a little firing, but not much, between seven a.m. and two p.m. Enemy
planes came over continually, flying very low, about thirty in the
course of the morning. They attacked one of our observation balloons,
which descended rapidly as they approached, and I think got down safely.
Italian anti-aircraft guns brought down one of them. Whenever we shelled
Mandria, a little village up the valley, a plane came over. Evidently
they had something there as to which they were sensitive, perhaps a
General's Billet!

At half past ten the Italians ditched a lorry full of ammunition just at
the top of the road from the Battery position to Pec village, in full
view of the enemy on Hill 464. At this time the village was being
heavily shelled by 5.9's, and our cookhouse on the outskirts was all but
hit, shells bursting all round it in a circle. Showers of bricks and
lumps of earth and masonry rose high in the air. One shell hit the
Artillery Group Headquarters of Major Borghese and I saw all his office
papers going up, a cloud of shreds, shining in the sun. I laughed and
said to myself, "There goes a lot of red tape!" I saw Borghese himself
later in the day limping along with a stick; a chunk of one of his
office walls had fallen on his foot.

The enemy meanwhile had begun to shell the lorry, methodically as their
idiotic habit was, with one shell every five minutes. It was too near us
to be pleasant, so the Major took out a party and hauled it out of their
view under cover of a bank. But this took some time. Leary stood by with
a stopwatch calling out the minutes. At the end of every fourth minute,
the party ran for cover. Then a few seconds later we heard the next
shell coming. The Major was hit on the hand once by a shell splinter
which drew blood, but nothing more serious than this happened.

About two o'clock a big bombardment worked up again, and the Volconiac
and Faiti became a sea of smoke and flame. This went on till dusk, we
firing hard all the time. More enemy planes came over, one even after
dark, a most unusual thing, flying very low indeed, under a heavy fire
of anti-aircraft Batteries and machine guns from the ground. Our planes
had been very scarce all day. They had nearly all gone north. For the
time being we had quite lost the command of the air in this sector.

The two British Batteries who were furthest forward had orders to move
back that night to reserve positions on San Michele. The Italians were
going to horse their guns, for it was said that the majority of the
tractors had gone north too. This move looked rather panicky, I thought.

Many red rockets went up in the early evening from Volconiac and Faiti.
The enemy were making another attack. Then a little later tricolour
rockets, red, white and green, went up. This was the signal that the
attack had been beaten off and that the situation was quiet again. The
firing died down about seven. We fed and put up for the night an Italian
officer, whose Battery used to be here, but had moved north yesterday.
He had just come back from a gas course at Palmanova. From a newspaper
which he had I saw that a strong offensive had begun on the afternoon of
the 23rd to the north of the Bainsizza Plateau. Either the attacks here
were only holding attacks, or the attack to the north was a feint and
the real thing was to be here. Anyhow, I thought, it is their Last
Despairing Great Cry! I turned in just after midnight. The night was
still and there was a bright moon and stars. A thick mist lay along the
Vippacco, just behind the trees. The air was damp and cold. It seemed
pretty quiet for the moment all along the Front.

I had a troubled night. In the early morning we were bombarded with gas
shell and had to wear respirators from a quarter to three till four
o'clock. We were firing from five till six and again steadily from a
quarter past seven onwards. We got orders to move back that night to
Boschini, on San Michele. I thought this a great mistake. Later in the
day our move was cancelled, as the two forward Batteries which pulled
out last night would not be in action on San Michele till to-morrow.
They had been last heard of stuck fast in a crush of traffic at the
bottom of the hill at Peteano. A strong team of horses were straining
their guts out in vain attempts to pull an Italian twelve-inch mortar up
the hill. It was this which had caused the block. Those two forward
Batteries _might_ have lost their guns in a quick retreat, I thought,
but hardly we. It seemed to be feared, however, that the two bridges
across the Vippacco might go.

That day we were shelled heavily with every kind of weapon, from
fifteen-inch downwards, especially the Left Section in the afternoon. We
had, as usual, marvellously good luck, and only had one casualty, and
that a slight wound. The spirit and endurance of the men were wonderful.
Enemy planes were over all day; we counted twenty-two between daybreak
and four p.m. Some hovered overhead and ranged their guns on us. Several
times we put our detachments under cover and ceased fire owing to the
shelling. My own gun was half buried by a great shower of earth kicked
up by a 9.45, which pitched right on top of the bank in front of us. But
Cotes, my Sergeant, and myself, crouching under cover of the girdles,
were quite unhurt. The rest of the detachment had been ordered down into
their dug-out. Another time the enemy neatly bracketed our Command Post
with twelve-inch, and several of us within were uncomfortably awaiting
the next round. But luckily for us he switched away to the right.

We had to fire hard most of the day, especially in the afternoon and
evening. It had been exhausting and almost sleepless work for the
detachments for several days past, for Darrell and a working party of
forty were away preparing the reserve position on San Michele, and we
had hardly any reliefs for the guns. The Major, too, looked very tired
and frayed, but, whenever our eyes met, he gave me a smile of
encouragement and leadership. That evening, during a short break in the
firing, he asked me, since he himself could not leave the Command Post,
to go round and "buck the men up" and thank them on his behalf for the
way in which they had behaved. "So long as the Major's pleased, we're
satisfied," said one man. Another, a Bombardier who afterwards got a
Commission, and had been with Darrell on a reconnaissance on Faiti a few
days before and had nearly been killed on the journey, said, "Well, Sir,
we were thinking of the boys in the Front Line today." And well he
might, for it had been a hellish bombardment up there. After delivering
my message to the men, I walked up and down the road in front of the
guns for a few moments in the short silence, realising how the Alliance
of Britain and Italy was burning itself more deeply than ever into our
hearts in these days of trial.

That night the enemy attacked again, and we lost Faiti and Hill 393, and
had to fire on them. I heard afterwards from the Group that Colonel
Canale, when he gave the order to fire on 393, was almost weeping on the
telephone. Next day we counter-attacked and retook Faiti, but 393
remained in Austrian hands. Rumours and denials of rumours came in from
the north. It was said that we had lost Monte Nero and Caporetto, and
that German Batteries had kept up a high concentration of gas for four
hours on our lines in the Cadore. And we knew that the Italian gas masks
were only guaranteed to last for an hour and a half in such conditions,
and that each man only carried one.

CHAPTER XXI

FROM THE VIPPACCO TO SAN GIORGIO DI NOGARA

On the 27th the rumours became bad. The German advance to the north was
said to be considerable and rapid. Orders came that all the British
Batteries were to pull out and park that night at Villa Viola, behind
Gradisca, "for duty on another part of the Front." Probably, we thought,
we were going north. "The gun concentration up there must be awful,"
said the Major. I told Cotes that we were probably going into the thick
of it, and his eyes shone with pride. He was a fine fellow. That day the
sun was shining, and the Italian planes in this sector seemed to have
regained command of the air. For the moment there was a little lull in
the firing, but we felt that some big fate was looming over us. I went
away to my hut for five minutes and wrote in my diary, "I here put it on
record once more that I am proud to fight in and for Italy. I repeat
that dying here is not death, it is flying into the dawn! If I die in
and for Italy, I would like to think that my death would do something
for Anglo-Italian sympathy and understanding."

In the early afternoon the Major went down to Headquarters. He rang me
up from there to say that two guns were to be pulled out at once, and
the other two to double their rate of fire. No. 4 gun was now engaging
two different targets with alternate rounds and different charges.

When the Major came back, he called all the men together and said. "I am
not going to conceal anything from you. The situation is serious. The
Italians have had a bad reverse up north. But there is no need for
anyone to get panicky. We shall pull out and go back to-night. That is
all I know at present. When I know more, I will tell you more. One gun
will remain in action till the last. No. 2 is the easiest to get out, so
I have chosen her for the post of honour." As the men scattered, I heard
several saying, "Good old No. 2!"

The Major told me that the Austrians were almost in Cividale, staggering
news. Tractors and lorries were to come and take away our guns and
stores in the evening. But the number of tractors was very limited and
Raven was doubtful if enough would come in time. The whole Third Army
was retreating, and three British Batteries, ourselves, the Battery in
Pec village and the Battery at Rupa, would be the last three Batteries
of Medium or Heavy Calibre left on this part of the Front.

All through the afternoon and evening Italian Infantry and Artillery
were retreating through Pec. Some looked stolid, others depressed,
others merely puzzled. But a little later a Battalion came along the
road the other way, going up to be sacrificed on Nad Logem. They halted
to rest by the roadside, full of gaiety and courage. They cheered our
men on No. 2 gun, who were pumping out shells as fast as they could.
"Bravi inglesi!" cried the Italians, and some of our men replied, "Good
luck, Johnny!" Unknown Italians were always "Johnny."

As the dark came on, ammunition dumps began to go up everywhere; the
Italians were deliberately exploding them, and great flashes of light,
brighter than even an Italian noonday, lit up the whole sky for minutes
at a time. Romano's Battery next door to us threw the remains of their
ammunition into the river, and pulled out and away about 6.30. They were
horse-drawn and did not need to wait for tractors. We wished each other
good-bye, and hoped we might meet again some better day. We too got
orders to destroy all ammunition we could not fire, as there would be no
transport to take it away. So we gave No. 2 a generous ration and heaved
the rest into the waters of the Vippacco.

No. 2 went on firing ceaselessly. So did one gun of the Battery in the
village, and one gun at Rupa. That Battery, being the furthest forward,
was in the greatest danger of the three. About 7 o'clock our first
tractor arrived and took away No. 1 gun with Winterton and Manzoni.
Enemy bombing planes came over frequently. One came right over us and
then turned down the Vallone, and there was a series of heavy
explosions, and great clouds of brownish smoke leapt up beneath her
track.

Why, I kept asking myself, didn't the fools shell Pec village, where a
crowd of men and guns were waiting for transport? Why didn't they put
over gas shell? Why didn't they bomb us? Evidently there were no Germans
_here_! About a quarter to nine No. 2 finished her ammunition, and we
pulled her out. The other three guns had gone now and the other two
British Batteries were clear, all but two lorries. Just after nine
o'clock our last tractor came along and took off No. 2, with Darrell in
charge of her. How the Italians had managed to get all these lorries and
tractors for us, I don't know, for, in the Third Army as a whole, they
were terribly short of transport. Many made the criticism that we should
have kept out in Italy our own transport. But the Italians certainly did
us very handsomely, at the cost of losing some bigger guns of their own.

After the last British gun had ceased to fire there was for about five
minutes an eerie stillness, as though all our Artillery had gone and
theirs was holding its fire. And then an Italian Field Battery opened
again on the right of Pec. For over an hour now I had been expecting,
minute by minute, to see the enemy Infantry come swarming along the Nad
Logem in the dusk, cutting off our retreat, for I knew we had nothing
but rear-guards left up there. But they did not come!

Only the Major and I and about forty men were left now, and we had been
told that there would be no more transport. So we destroyed everything
that we had been unable to get away, and the Major informed Headquarters
of the situation and then disconnected the telephone and the men fell in
and we marched away. We were just in time to see an Italian Field
Battery come into Pec at the gallop, the gunners all cheering, unlimber
their guns, take up position and open fire. It was a smart piece of
work, done with a real Latin gesture. How enfuriating it was to be
leaving these wooden huts of ours and these good positions, on which
had been spent so many hours of labour, where we could have passed such
a comfortable winter, going forth now none knew whither! Old Natale, one
of the Italians attached to us, chalked up in German on the entrance to
one of the huts, "You German pigs, we shall soon be back again!" But at
that moment I did not feel so sure. Natale was afterwards lost in the
retreat, and was reported by us as "missing." But one of our men saw him
again six months later with an Italian Battery and said he looked
several years younger!

We passed Campbell, the Medical Officer, standing outside his dug-out on
the road. He was waiting for the last of the other Batteries' parties to
get away. He told me afterwards that we were out only just in time.
Within half an hour of our going, the Austrians fairly plastered the
position with shells of all calibres. They shelled the road a little as
we went along, but not too much. As we passed the railway embankment at
Rubbia, we saw and spoke to some Italian machine-gunners in position,
whose orders were to hold up the enemy till the last possible moment.
They were quite calm and determined, those boys, knowing perfectly well
that, by the time the enemy came, the Isonzo bridges would have been
blown up behind them. I dragged myself on with an aching heart. One who
retreats cuts a poor figure beside a rear-guard that stays behind and
fights.

We crossed the Isonzo at Peteano, and took a short cut across the fields
to Farra. In the crowd and the dark we were jostled by some Italian
Infantry. We hailed them and found that they were our old friends, the
Lecce Brigade. The Major made our men stand back. "Pass, Lecce," he
said. "Good luck to you!" We marched on through Farra to Gradisca, both
blazing in the night. The towns and villages everywhere in this sector
had been deliberately fired by the retreating Italians, in addition to
the ammunition dumps. The whole countryside was blazing and exploding. I
thought of Russia in 1812, and the Russian retreat before Napoleon, and
Tchaikovsky's music.

It began to rain, but that made no difference to the burning. In
Gradisca burning petrol was running about the streets. Earlier in the
evening there had been a queer scene here. The Headquarters of the
British Staff had been at Gradisca, and the Camp Commandant had made a
hobby of fattening rabbits for the General's Mess. When the time had
come that day to pack up and go, it was found that the lorries provided
were fully loaded with office stores, Staff officers' bulky kit and
20,000 cigarettes, which the General was specially proud of having saved
from his canteen. There was no room for the Camp Commandant's rabbit
hutches, so these were opened and the fat inmates released, to the
delight of the civilians and Italian soldiery in Gradisca, who knocked
them over or shot them as they ran. I heard this from a gunner, who was
officer's servant to one of the Staff and witnessed the scene.

A few miles away, at the Ordnance Depôt at Villa Freifeldt, thousands of
pounds' worth of gun stores stood ready, packed in crates, to be
removed. But no transport came for them, and they were abandoned and
fell into Austrian hands. For lack of them, our Batteries were
afterwards kept out of action for several weeks. Whoever ordered these
things seems to have thought it more important to save the Staff's kit
and the General's cigarettes.

Just before we entered Gradisca, we passed a Battalion of the
Granatieri, the Italian Grenadiers, all six foot tall, with collar
badges of crimson and white, coming up from reserve to fight a
rear-guard action. I had seen them a few days before in rest billets and
admired their appearance. And in their march that night and in their
faces was scorn for fugitives and contempt for death. The Major said to
me, as they swung past us, that _that_ Battalion could be trusted to
fight to the end. And they did. Some of our men met a few of their
survivors at Mestre a week later. Nearly the whole Battalion had been
killed or wounded, but they had held up the Austrian advance for several
hours.

On the further side of Gradisca we passed a great platform, which had
been erected a few weeks before for the Duke of Aosta's presentation of
medals for the Carso offensive. It was here that the Major had received
the Italian Silver Medal for Valour. The platform looked ironical that
night, still decked with bunting, limp and drenched now by the rain, and
lit up by the flames of the burning town. We reached Villa Viola about
11.30 p.m. It was to have been a rendezvous, but there was no one there.
Only the rain still falling. About midnight we entered an empty house,
and threw ourselves down upon the floor to sleep.

We had slept for less than an hour, when we were hurriedly awakened. The
Italians had orders to set fire to the house. Meanwhile Savogna, our
Canadian Italian Corporal, had just returned from scouting for us, and
reported that parties from the other Batteries were in a house half a
mile away. We marched off again through pouring rain, our path lit up by
the flames, which in places thrust their long tongues right across the
road. The wind blew clouds of smoke in our faces. The air was full of
the roaring of the fires, the crackle of blazing woodwork, the crash of
houses falling in, the loud explosions of ammunition dumps and petrol
stores, which now and again for a few seconds lighted up the whole night
sky for miles around with a terrific glare, and then died down again.
Far as the eye could reach the night was studded with red and golden
fires. Everywhere behind the front of the retreating Third Army a
systematic destruction was being carried out. The Third Army was
retreating in good order, unbroken and undefeated, retreating only
because its northern flank was in danger of being turned. The Third Army
was proving to the enemy that its movements were deliberate and governed
by a cool purpose. The enemy should advance into a wilderness.

Again I seemed to hear in the air the music of "1812," and the bells of
burning Moscow ringing out loud and clear above the triumph song of the
invader.

Our men marched doggedly on, some looking puzzled and full of wonder,
others tired but cheerful, others with expressionless, uncomprehending
faces. But in the faces of a few I read a consciousness of the
tremendous tragedy of which we formed a tiny part. We found the other
Batteries in a house not yet marked down for burning. The house was
crowded out already and all the best places taken, such as they were.
There were pools of water everywhere on the floor. Officers of the Group
were there, knowing nothing, awaiting the appearance of Colonel Raven.
All our party got in somehow and lay down to sleep. But half an hour
later we were roused again. Raven had come and ordered that all should
push on to Palmanova.

Some of our men were sleeping very heavily and were hard to waken. When
we started it was still raining. The roads were crowded with traffic,
including many guns. Our own went by with the rest, Winterton, Darrell,
Leary and Manzoni with them. Each Battery party marched independently,
the easier to get through blocks in the traffic. The Square at Palmanova
had been fixed as the next rendezvous.

The stream of refugees with their slow-moving wagons drawn by oxen, or
their little donkey carts, or trudging on foot carrying bundles, became
gradually thicker and more painful. For we were back now in country that
yesterday or the day before had fancied itself remote from the battle
zone. I remember one elderly peasant woman, tall and erect as a young
girl, with white hair and a face like Dante, calm, beautiful and stern.
She was alone, tramping along through the mud. And she had the walk of a
queen.

At Versa we halted for a few minutes at the Hospital. All the wounded
had been evacuated.[1] Campbell was lying on a bed in one of the empty
wards, snatching a little rest. He had seen the last British troops away
from Pec and had then followed on a motor-bicycle. I went into the old
R.A.M.C. Mess to see if any food or drink was left. The question of food
was beginning to be serious for the whole retreating Army. Italian
troops were clearing out everything. I found a wine bottle half full,
and took a deep drink. It was vinegar, but it bucked one up. I handed
the bottle to an Italian, and told him it was "good English wine." He
drank a little, saw the joke, smiled and passed it on to an unsuspecting
companion. I got a little milk which I shared with the Major and some of
our men. Then we resumed the march.

[Footnote 1: One wounded British soldier, who had been in an Italian
Field Hospital which was not evacuated in time, was taken prisoner by
the Austrians. He told me, when he was released a year later, that the
Austrians bayoneted the Italian wounded whom they found in this
hospital, but spared the British, and, on the whole, treated them well.]

We reached Palmanova about 7 a.m. It was now the 28th of October. We met
Raven in the Square, where were also collected a British General and his
Staff officers. They were standing about, with a half lost look on their
faces. There was no evidence of decision or any plan. The General was
smiling, as his habit was. The Staff Captain was telling someone, in a
hopeless voice, that he had heard that the Italians were going back to
the Tagliamento. Just as we arrived, the Italians began to set fire to
the town. Dense clouds of black smoke, fanned by a strong wind, began to
pour over our heads. Flames were soon roaring round houses, where three
months ago I had been a guest. But the inmates had all gone now. Food
and drink was being sold in the shops at knock-down prices. The Italian
military authorities were requisitioning all bread, and issued some to
us. The Major ordered it to be kept in reserve.

I went round the town and into the Railway Station looking for our guns.
But there was no sign of them. I came back and slept for an hour amid
some rubble under the archway inside one of the town gates. The town was
burning furiously. Our men, wet to the skin, sheltered themselves from
the smoke and the cold wind in the dry moat outside the walls.

Then the order came to move on. We formed up and started with the rest.
Nobody knew whither. Some said Latisana, but no one knew how far off
this was. The men had no rations except the bread obtained at Palmanova,
and no prospect, apparently, of getting any. The Supply Officers of the
A.S.C. might as well have gone to Heaven, for all the use they were to
us during those days of retreat. It was raining again and the roads were
blocked. We proceeded slowly for a mile or two, and were then turned off
the road into a damp, open field, which someone said was a "strategic
point." Here a number of different Battery parties collected. We were to
wait for the guns. The downpour steadily increased, the field rapidly
became a marsh, and there was no shelter anywhere. Raven walked up and
down, puffing at this pipe, taking the situation with admirable calm. It
was at this time that I personally touched my bedrock of misery, both
mental and physical. For there seemed to be nothing to be done, and,
what most irked me, there were so many senior officers present that I
myself could take no decisions. Then some of our guns arrived, and were
halted at the side of the road to wait for the rest. But this made the
traffic block worse, and they had to move forward again, and the idea
of getting them all together was abandoned.

Raven then gave the order to the rest of us to move on. There were some
vacant places in various cars and lorries at this point and some
footsore men were put in. The Major insisted, in spite of my protests
that I preferred to walk, that I should get into one of the cars, which
I shared with Littleton, the Chaplain who had thought that war "might be
tremendously worth while" and three junior officers from Raven's
Headquarters. I was, in truth, pretty done at this stage, chiefly
through want of sleep, compared to which I always found want of food a
trifling inconvenience. It was now about 4 p.m. and we could only make
very slow progress. A rendezvous had been fixed by Raven at Foglie,
where rations were to have been distributed. But there was no one and no
rations there, and it seemed that Raven had taken the wrong road. The
enemy were said to be advancing from the north at right angles to our
only possible line of retreat, and the chances seemed strongly in favour
of our all being cut off.

An Italian doctor ran out into the road and stopped our car, almost
beside himself with despair. He had been left in charge of a number of
severely wounded cases, without any food, medical necessities or
transport. But we had no food and could do nothing to help him, except
promise to try to have transport sent back to him from San Giorgio di
Nogara.

CHAPTER XXII

FROM SAN GIORGIO TO THE TAGLIAMENTO

We reached San Giorgio about 9 p.m. and here I got out of the car, which
two of Raven's Staff took on to try and arrange for transport to be sent
back for the Italian wounded. Having slept for an hour or two in the
car, I felt quite a different being and fit for anything. Stragglers
were coming in from the various Batteries' dismounted parties, and I
collected nearly a hundred of these men into a hall on the ground floor
of an Italian Field Hospital. They lay about on the stone floor,
sleeping like logs. Upstairs a panic had spread among the wounded that
they would be abandoned. Men were crying with terror and struggling to
get out of bed. Campbell, who had now joined us, went up and helped the
Italian medical personnel. Soon afterwards ambulances of both the
Italian and British Red Cross began to arrive, and the hospital was
quickly cleared. From one British Red Cross Driver I got a large box of
Cabin biscuits, which I distributed among our men, some of whom were
ravenously hungry. I also found a tap of good drinking water in the main
street and here we refilled all available water bottles, including those
of several men who were too fast asleep to waken.

The question then arose what to do with these stragglers. I went to the
station, but found that no more trains were running. Latisana was said
to be only "a few kilometres" away. It was in fact more than twenty. I
discovered that it was on the Tagliamento and I supposed that, once
across the river, we should be momentarily safe from risk of capture,
and, if ammunition was forthcoming, our Batteries might once more come
into action. Meanwhile we should push on as soon as possible. On the
other hand the men were very tired, having been marching for twenty-four
hours, with only a few short breaks. A few hours' sleep now might be
worth a lot to them later on.

Several civilians came up to me and asked when the Germans would be
here. "This is my house," one old man explained, pointing to a small
house near the Hospital, "and I shall have to leave everything if I go
away. But I cannot stay....," and he began to cry.

In the early hours of the 29th I put some of our most footsore
stragglers on to lorries going in the direction of Latisana. The rest
marched off under Henderson, one of the officers from Raven's
Headquarters, who had come with me in the car to San Giorgio. Meanwhile
I was keeping a look-out for our guns in the dense columns of traffic
slowly crawling past. I saw guns belonging to other Batteries, and was
told that some of ours were further behind. It was just getting light,
when a tractor appeared drawing two of our guns and one belonging to
another British Battery, which we had picked up on the road a long way
back with only three gunners in charge of it, and which would certainly
have been lost, if we had not taken it in tow. But, as the result of
this additional load, our tractor had been breaking down all the way
along, and had fallen almost to the rear of the retreating column. It
had a damnable and useless accumulator, but there was no means of
changing this. With the tractor and guns were Winterton, Darrell, and
Leary, also the Battery Quartermaster Sergeant and two of our lorries.
They told me Manzoni was well on ahead with the other two guns and I
told them that the Major and the bulk of the dismounted party must also
be a good distance ahead, as stragglers from this party had appeared
here many hours before.

We were now the last British guns on the road, a post of honour which we
continued to hold. I was delighted to find that I was now entitled, by
reason of seniority, to take command. I sent on the two lorries with
Winterton and Darrell, to get in touch as soon as possible with the two
guns in front and the Major's party. Leary and I remained behind with
the tractor and its load. We had about thirty men with us and a small
quantity of rations, including a little tea. We moved on slowly and got
stuck in a bad block of traffic at San Giorgio cross roads. Here we had
to remain stationary for several hours. The dawn was breaking and we
made some tea.

About 5 a.m. I got tired of sitting still and walked about half a mile
down the road to find out the cause of the block. I began to control and
jerrymander the traffic and at first annoyed an Italian officer, who was
there with the same object as myself; but I persuasively pointed out to
him the benefits to both of us, if we could only succeed in getting a
move on, and he then calmed down and began to help me. In the end we
both manoeuvred our own transport into a moving stream, and went
forward smiling.

We went along at a fine pace for several miles and then our tractor
stopped and wouldn't start up again. Whereupon there came to our
assistance a young man named Rinaldo Rinaldi, a skilled and resourceful
mechanic, who was driving a tractor in rear of us. He patched up our
engine and got us going again. But we kept on breaking down after
intervals never very long. Time after time Rinaldo Rinaldi came running
up, smiling and eager to help. He patched us up and got us going six
times. But at last he had to pass us and go on. For he, too, was drawing
guns. I shall never forget Rinaldo Rinaldi and the cheerful help he gave
us. In the end he left us an accumulator, but it was not much better
than our own.

Enemy planes now began to appear in the sky, some scouting only, others
dropping bombs. They did more damage to the wretched refugees than to
the military. What chances they missed that day! Once or twice, when we
were stationary, I gave the order to scatter in the fields to left and
right of the road. But they never came very near to hitting us. They
flew very high and their markmanship was atrocious.

Atrocious also was our tractor! Finally, when it broke down and we had
no fresh accumulator, we had to unlimber the front gun, attach drag
ropes to the tractor, haul vigorously on the ropes until the engine
started up, then back the tractor and front limber back to the guns,
limber up, cast off the ropes and go ahead again. We did this three or
four times in the course of an hour, and enjoyed the sense of
triumphing over obstacles. But it was very laborious, and the intervals
between successive breakdowns grew ominously shorter and shorter. And
the last time the trick didn't work, though we had all heaved and heaved
till we were very near exhaustion. We were fairly stuck now, half
blocking the road. Great excitement, as was only natural, developed
among those behind us.

I sent forward an orderly with a message to the Major, describing our
plight and asking that, if possible, another tractor might be sent back
from Latisana to pull us. This message never reached the Major, but was
opened by another Field officer, who sent back this flatulent reply. "If
you are with Major Blinks, you had better ask him whether you may use
your own discretion and, if necessary, remove breech blocks and abandon
guns." I was not with Major Blinks, and I neither knew nor cared where
he might be. Nor had I any intention of abandoning the guns. I
determined, without asking anyone's permission, to use my discretion in
a different way.

I saw, a little distance in front, an Italian Field Artillery Colonel in
a state of wild excitement. He was rushing about with an unopened bottle
of red wine in his hand, waving it ferociously at the heads of refugees,
and driving them and their carts off the road down a side track. A queer
pathetic freight some of these carts carried, marble clocks and
blankets, big wine flasks and canaries in cages. The Colonel had driven
off the road also a certain Captain Medola, of whom I shall have more to
say in a moment, and who was sitting sulkily on his horse among the
civilian carts. The Colonel's object, it appeared, was to get a number
of Field Batteries through. He had cleared a gap in the blocked traffic
and his Field Guns were now streaming past at a sharp trot. But he was
an extraordinary spectacle and made me want to laugh. Treading very
delicately, I approached this enfuriated man, and explained the helpless
situation of our guns, pointing out that we were also unwillingly
impeding the movements of his own. I asked if he could order any
transport to be provided for us. He waved his bottle at me, showed no
sign of either civility or comprehension, only screaming at the top of
his voice, "Va via, va via!"[1]

[Footnote 1: "Away with you, away with you!"]

I gave him up as hopeless, and went back to my guns, intending to wait
till he had disappeared and things had quieted down again, and then to
look for help elsewhere. But the Latin mind often follows a thread of
order through what an Anglo-Saxon is apt to mistake for a mere hurricane
of confused commotion. Within five minutes Captain Medola came up to me
and said that the Colonel had ordered him to drag our tractor and guns.
Medola was in command of a Battery of long guns, and had one of these
attached to a powerful tractor on the road in front of us. To this long
gun, therefore, we now attached our tractor, useless as a tractor but
containing valuable gun stores, and our three guns. It was a tremendous
strain for one tractor, however strong, to pull, and we decided a little
later to abandon our own tractor and most of its contents.

Medola, having handed over his horse to an orderly, who was to ride on
ahead and arrange for a fresh supply of petrol for his tractors, of
which there were three, mounted the front of the leading tractor and I
got up beside him. He rendered us most invaluable help in a most willing
spirit and at considerable risk to himself. For he undoubtedly had to go
much more slowly with us in tow than he could have gone if he had been
alone.

We saw another Battery of Italian heavy guns going along the road,
heavier than either ours or Medola's. They were an ancient type, which
we had seen sometimes on the Carso, and not of very high military value.
But their gunners took a regimental and affectionate pride in those old
guns. They had neither tractors nor horses, but they had dragged their
beloved pieces for thirty miles from the rocky heights of the Carso,
along good roads and bad, up and down hill, through impossible traffic
blocks, down on to the plains as far as Palmanova, with nothing but long
ropes and their own strong arms. They had forty men hauling on each gun.
At Palmanova new hauling parties had been put on, who dragged the guns
another thirty miles to the far side of the Tagliamento at Latisana. And
as they hauled, they sang, until they were too tired to go on singing,
and could only raise, from time to time, their rhythmical periodic cry
of "Sforza!... Sforza!"[1]

[Footnote 1: "Heave!... Heave!"]

As we passed through Muzzano, the town and road were heavily bombed. The
bell in the campanile jangled wildly and weeping women crowded into the
church, as though thinking to find sanctuary there. Others stood gazing
helplessly up into the sky. Here I saw some Italian Infantry, mostly
young, who were delighted to be retreating. "Forward, you militarists!"
they cried to us as we passed. "This is your punishment! How much longer
do you think the war is going to last? What about Trieste now?" They
spoke with joyful irony, as though the conquest of Trieste had been a
slaves' task, imposed upon unwilling Italy by foreign imperialists. They
were the only Italian troops I saw during the retreat, who showed any
sign of being under the influence of "defeatist" or German propaganda.

The stream of refugees steadily thickened on the roads. More than once I
got down and ran on ahead, calling out with monotonous refrain to the
drivers of civilian carts to keep well over to the right of the road, so
as to let the guns pass. They all did their best to obey, poor brutes,
and we gained some useful ground in that endless column.

At nightfall we were still eight or nine kilometres from Latisana. The
traffic block grew worse and worse, and there were too few Carabinieri
to exercise proper control. We stuck for hours at a time, with nothing
moving for miles, three motionless lines of traffic abreast on the road,
all pointing in the same direction. Tired men slept and wakeful men
waited and watched and cursed at the delay. Behind us, far off, we could
hear the booming of the guns, which seemed from hour to hour to come a
little nearer, and flashes of distant gunfire flickered in the night
sky. Back there the rear-guards were still fighting, and brave men were
dying to give us time to get away. It seemed just then that their
sacrifice might be in vain. What a haul the Austrians would have here!

And behind and around us burning villages were still flaming in the
dark, and throwing up the sharp black outlines of the trees.

Afterwards I heard of some of the deeds that had been done "back there."
I heard of the charges of the Italian Cavalry, of the Novara Lancers and
the Genoa Dragoons, crack regiments, full of the best horsemen in Italy,
who had been waiting, waiting, all the war through, for their chance to
come. Their chance had come at last, the chance to die, charging against
overwhelming odds, in order that Italy, or at least the glory of her
name, might live for ever. One commanding officer called all his
officers around him and said, "The common people of Italy have betrayed
our country's honour, and now we, the gentlemen of Italy, are going to
save it!" and then he led the charge, and fell leading it. It was a
fine, aristocratic gesture, though the prejudices of his class partly
blinded him.

Near Cervignano Italian Cavalry charged the massed machine guns of the
enemy and, when the horses went down, the men went on, and then the men
went down, all but a few, and those few for a moment broke the line and
held up the advance, and gave to the mass of the retreating troops just
that little space of extra time, which spans the gulf between escape and
destruction.

And away up north on Monte Nero, left behind when the rest of the Army
retired, Alpini and Bersaglieri resisted for many days, and aeroplanes
flew back and dropped food and ammunition from the skies for them. And
when their ammunition was all shot away, that garrison came down into
the plains, and a few survivors fought their way through with bombs and
bayonets back to the Italian lines.

And many other such deeds were surely done that will never be known,
because the men that did them died out of sight of any of their comrades
who survived.

In the small hours of the 30th of October, I left our guns in Leary's
charge and determined to walk on to Latisana, to see if I could not find
some person in authority and get something done to move things on. I had
only gone a little way when I met Bixio, a Captain of Mountain
Artillery, attached to Raven's Headquarters. He had come back to see how
far behind our rearmost guns were. I saw him several times during the
retreat. He did fine work more than once in creating order out of
confusion. He looked a magnificent, almost a Mephistophelian, figure,
with his dark features, his flashing angry eyes, his air of decision,
his sharp gestures, his tall body enveloped in a loose cloak, his Alpino
hat, with its long single feather. He told me that all traffic along
this road into Latisana had been stopped for the past three hours, in
order to let traffic from the north get on, for it was from that
direction that the advance of the enemy was most threatening.

I walked on and found a British Red Cross Ambulance stuck in the block.
I talked for a few moments to the driver, who gave me a piece of cake
and some wine. When I reached Latisana, I found traffic pouring through
along the road from the north. I crossed the bridge over the Tagliamento
and looked down at the broad swift current, glistening beneath. Hope
leapt again within me at the sight. Here, at last, I said to myself, is
a fine natural obstacle. We shall turn here and stand at bay, and the
invader will come no further.

I had been told that there were some huts on the right hand side, just
over the bridge, where our men would be, where the A.S.C. would have
delivered rations and the Staff had fixed a rendezvous. I, therefore,
expected to find the Major and our dismounted party, or at least someone
from another Battery, or some of either Raven's or the General's Staff.
But there was nothing there; no British troops, no rations, and no
Staff! Only the never ending rain, and a confused stream of Italian
troops, chiefly Field Guns, hurrying across the bridge.

There was nothing to do but to go back. The sentries on the bridge tried
to stop me, but I insisted that I must see some Artillery officer in
authority. They directed me to the Square, where I found Colonel Canale,
controlling the movements of Batteries, looking straight before him out
of uncomprehending, heavy eyes, like one crushed under a weight of
bitter humiliation. He asked where our guns were. I told him they were
getting near now, but stuck fast in the traffic. He said it was
forbidden to let through traffic on that road at present, but he would
do what he could. I asked if there were any new orders. "No," he said,
"only forward across the bridge, and then push on as fast as possible to
Portogruaro." I left him, and found three of our stragglers from the
Major's party, asleep on the floor of a forge. I told them to cross the
river and wait on the Portogruaro road for myself and the guns. I asked
an Italian Corporal if there was anywhere in Latisana where one could
get a drink. He said he thought not, but gave me a bottle full of cold
coffee, brandy and sugar in about equal proportions. It was a splendid
drink, but a little too sweet.

I walked back along the road towards the guns. Some houses on the
outskirts of the town were burning furiously. The traffic was beginning
to move forward along our road, very slowly and with frequent halts. I
had two overcoats with me when we started from Pec. Both were long ago
wet through, and I was wearing over my shoulders at this time a blanket
lent to me by Medola. This, too, was thoroughly drenched by now. In the
fields on either side of the road Infantry were lying out in the rain,
asleep, dreaming, perhaps, of Rome or Sicily or the Bay of Naples. The
dawn of another day was breaking, cold, damp and miserable, symbolic of
this great weary tragedy.

I had not gone far when I met four of our men carrying on a stretcher
the dead body of the Battery Staff Sergeant Artificer. He had dropped
asleep on one of the guns and, as the tractor moved on, he had fallen
forward, head downwards, beneath the gun wheel, which had passed over
him, along the whole length of his body, crushing him to death. They
said he died before they could get him out. He was a good man and a very
skilled worker, full of pluck and spirit. The last thing he had done for
me was to get everything ready for rendering the guns unserviceable in
case we should have to abandon them. There was no chance of decent
burial for him here, but I had his body placed upon an empty trench
cart, which was being towed by a lorry of another Battery, and put two
of our men in charge of it. They buried him the next day or the day
after in a cemetery near Portogruaro.

About 7 a.m., as I was still making my way back through the traffic
towards our guns, it was reported that enemy cavalry patrols had been
seen to the north of the road, and that shots had been exchanged. For a
moment there was some panic and confusion, but a scheme of defence was
quickly organised. No one had supposed that they could yet be so near. I
found Bixio rallying some Infantrymen, with eloquent words and great
gestures, and an Italian Infantry Major, calm and smiling, was putting
out a screen of machine gunners and riflemen across the road itself and
along a hedge five hundred yards to the north of it. All was in
readiness for putting our guns completely out of action. There would be
nothing else to do, if the enemy appeared, for we had no gun ammunition,
and it was impossible to get on, until the whole traffic block in front
of us had been shifted forward. But I told Bixio that I should do
nothing to the guns, unless there was some evidence that the enemy was
really approaching with a superiority of force over our own.

The enemy, however, did not at that time reappear and the best bit of
hustling traffic management that I had yet witnessed during the retreat,
now took place. The northern road was at last clear at Latisana, and the
authorities turned their attention to us. A breakdown gang appeared and
a number of new tractors and lorries with refills of petrol. Civilian
carts whose drivers remained, were ordered to drive on, those which had
been abandoned were overturned to one side into the ditches, and dead
horses and wreckage due to bombing or the brief moments of panic were
likewise thrust off the road. Relays of fresh drivers took over all the
lorries and tractors which would still go. The rest went into the ditch
on top of the dead horses and derelict carts. The heavier loads which
single tractors had been pulling were split up between two or more. In a
surprisingly short time the whole mass began to move.

Here I parted from Medola, who had been a very good friend to us. Our
three guns got a new tractor to themselves and I got up beside the
driver. And so at last we entered Latisana. Our new driver was immensely
enthusiastic, but very excited. He told me that he had had two brothers
killed in the war and had applied, when the retreat began, to be
transferred from Mechanical Transport to the Infantry. That morning, he
said, he had heard General Pettiti, who was our Army Corps Commander,
give the order that all the British Batteries must first be got across
the river and only then the Italian. I said that I saw no good reason
for this preference, but that anyhow he was driving the last three
British guns. This pleased him tremendously. By now I was wrapped up in
a new and dry Italian blanket, which I had taken from an abandoned cart
by the roadside.

Our tractor, less enthusiastic than its driver, broke down continually.
It was rumoured that the bridge had been blown up already, and there
were wild screams of despair from a crowd of women, who came running
past us. At last we turned the last corner and came in sight of the
Tagliamento. The bridge was still intact. Italian Generals were rushing
to and fro, gesticulating, giving orders. General Pettiti sent a
special orderly to ask me if mine were the last British guns. I told him
yes. Our tractor broke down three times on the bridge itself. But at
last we were over. One of our party had an Italian flag and waved it and
cried "Viva l'Italia!" Not long after, the bridge went up, with an
explosion that could be heard for miles around.

CHAPTER XXIII

FROM THE TAGLIAMENTO TO TREVISO

I heard later that the Major and his party had reached Latisana the
previous day. Winterton had joined them near Muzzano. They had marched
for forty-eight hours practically without food and with only some three
hours' rest in stray halts. They had been magnificent, but they were
utterly done, and the Major, who had been most done of all, told me
afterwards that it had made him cry to watch them hobbling along,--some
of them men too old or of too low a medical category to have passed for
the Infantry,--and to hear them singing,

   "What's the use of worrying?
    It never was worth while.
    So pack up your sorrows in your old kit bag,
    And smile, smile, smile!"

The spirit of the men in the retreat from Mons was not finer than the
spirit of those men of ours.

At Latisana they got on board a train for Treviso. It was about the
last train that was running.

My party, though they were longer on the road, were at least able to
ride a great part of the way on the tractors and guns.

Once across the Tagliamento, our tractor not only continued to break
down every few hundred yards, but also developed the unpleasant habit of
catching fire. Twice we put the fire out with the squirts and chemicals
provided for the purpose, and a third time with mud. I determined not to
risk a fourth time, and so pulled on to the side of the road and halted.
I sent on the Battery Sergeant Major on a passing lorry to Portogruaro
with a note to the Major asking that another tractor might be sent back,
and I also sent Avoglia to the nearest Italian Headquarters to see if he
could raise a tractor there. We were halted at the top of a hill on the
road running along the western bank of the river. We were indeed
literally "across," but we should have provided a splendid target for
enemy Artillery advancing on the further side. A good system of trenches
ran alongside the road, and these were now manned in force by Italian
Infantry. Field Guns also had come into position behind them. Our men
took advantage of the enforced halt to collect fuel, light fires and
make tea. We were still halted here at nightfall.

Soon after dark some Italians came up and told us that we were blocking
the road, which was not true, as we were well to the side. However, as
neither Avoglia nor the Sergeant Major had yet returned with a new
tractor, and as the Italians said that they would pull us on, I
cordially agreed to the attempt being made. They attached a tractor with
a heavy lorry in tow to our inflammatory tractor and our three guns.
They asked that an attempt should be made to start up our tractor also,
but I succeeded in persuading them that this was inexpedient. They then
started up their own tractor only. To my great surprise, we began to
move. It was a magnificent machine, and forged ahead splendidly,
contrary to all the laws limiting its capacity, rumbling and backfiring
under the unwonted strain, for miles through the gloom.

Then the moon began to rise. The night, for the first time since the
retreat began, was fine and clear. We could only go slowly and broke
down now and then. But all went pretty well, until we swung our long
train a little too sharply round a corner in the road, and the last two
guns got ditched. While we were trying to get them out, a British Major,
whom I will call Star, appeared on the scene. He came from Portogruaro
with the news that five new tractors were on their way back, and that
some other British guns were ditched further ahead. I therefore thanked
the officer in charge of the Italian tractor and lorry for all he had
done for us and advised him now to go on and leave us, as our position
was tiresome but no longer critical. This he did.

The moonlight was now bright as day, and one of Star's promised tractors
arrived and finally succeeded in getting out our ditched guns.

Star had painted a bright picture of Portogruaro. All the British guns,
he said, were parked together in the Piazza and there was a large
granary close by, full of happy men with plenty of rations and straw.
So, it seems, some imaginative person had told him. We reached
Portogruaro in the small hours of the 31st of October. The moon had set
and it was very dark. Several of us made a most careful search in the
Piazza. But there were no British guns there, no granary, no straw, no
rations. I halted the guns just outside the gate of the town and told
the men to turn in and sleep. Soon after daybreak we all woke feeling
very hungry. I issued practically all that remained of our rations, a
little bully, a little biscuit and a very little tea.

Wanting a wash and, still more urgently, a shave, I went into a house
and asked for the loan of some soap and a towel. A number of terrified
old women gathered round me, in doubt whether to fly or to stay. I
advised them to stay, for I took for granted at this time that the
Tagliamento line would hold. They pressed upon me coffee and bread, and
I heard them repeating over and over again to one another my assurances
that the enemy was still far away and would never get as far as
Portogruaro. It was hard not to cry.

Star arrived during the morning and took charge. There was no need, he
said, to hurry on. We had better rest here for a day. He arranged for us
all to draw rations from the Italian Comando di Tappa. Treviso was to be
our next stopping place. We were disturbed a little during the morning
by enemy planes dropping bombs on the town, but none fell very near us.

In the afternoon we moved on and parked our guns near the station along
with those of the other British Batteries, which had arrived before us.
Bombing raids continued and were more serious that afternoon than in the
morning. One bomb fell on a house, which was full of men from one of the
other Batteries, and caused a number of casualties. It was only by good
luck that a number of my own men were not in that house at the time.
Fortunately I had had words, as two tired men will, with one of the
officers of the other Battery, about the joint use of the kitchen, and
my men, when I asked them, had decided that they preferred, as always,
to "run their own show" and not "pig in with other Batteries." To that
attitude of independence some of them probably owe their lives.

In the afternoon Raven turned up, and said that he had arranged for us
to go on to Treviso by train. We loaded our guns on to trucks, and
waited several hours in the station yard for the promised train. It was
cold and wet and more bombers came over us. They had bombed the station
for the last three nights, I heard. But nothing hit it while we were
there. The train left at 9.30 p.m. Leary and another officer and I tried
to share one wet blanket. We were too wet and cold to sleep. I walked up
and down the carriage trying to get warm. They bombed the railway
several times during our journey, and once, when a bomb fell near our
train, there was a rumour that the engine driver had gone away and left
us standing. But it was quite untrue. We crawled along, with many stops.
It seemed a quite interminable journey. But at 8 o'clock next morning,
the 1st of November, we came to Treviso.

CHAPTER XXIV

THOUGHTS AFTER THE DISASTER

We hung about for a while in the station, nobody knowing what was to
happen next. Then Leary and I went off to try to find some food. We had
been living just lately on ration biscuits and a tin of Australian peach
jam. There was not much left at the Buffet, where we found Bixio, but we
got a little salami and some eels and wine and coffee. Meanwhile our
train had gone on to Mestre, owing to a mistake between two railway
officials, and had to return next day. Leary's feet were so bad that he
could hardly walk. I got them dressed for him by the Italian Red Cross,
but he could walk no better afterwards. The Villa Passi, the British
Headquarters, was several miles off. An enemy plane came over and bombed
Treviso, when we were in the station square, trying in vain to find a
conveyance. But none of the bombs fell very close to us. At last we
hailed a British lorry, which took us to Villa Passi, and then on to
Carbonera, where odds and ends of Batteries had been turning up for
several days past. The Major was very delighted to see us, a rumour
having got about that we and the last guns had been left on the wrong
side of the Tagliamento, when the bridge went up. He had almost given up
hope of seeing us again.

Then I went to bed and slept for hours and hours. Next morning from my
window I could see the Alps lying very low on the horizon, like a ball
of fluffy snow. The sun was shining and a fountain was playing in the
garden. I could hardly realise that we had reached, for a moment at
least, a place of peace, where there was no more fighting or retreating.
Our men were worn out, most of them, and slept like logs. They had been
sorely tried. Their pluck and endurance had been splendid. But they got
no message of thanks or praise from the British General who at that time
nominally commanded us. This distinguished man I had last seen in the
Square at Palmanova, amid the smoke and flames, with his car standing
close at hand ready to push off, and he had arrived at Treviso in good
time. He was now comfortably installed at the Villa Passi, and the day
some of our footsore men limped into Treviso, he was lunching with his
Staff, all bright and polished and sleek, in the Hotel Stella d'Oro.

We all expected, for days, that he would call a parade and address the
men who had saved what he used to call "his guns," or at least that he
would send some message. But he made no sign, except to open a canteen
for the sale of the 20,000 cigarettes, which some intelligent
subordinate had saved in preference to valuable gun stores now in
Austrian hands.

The day after my arrival I read a newspaper for the first time for over
a week, but the news was very bad and the retreat still continuing. The
Austrians were across the Tagliamento in strong force at several points.
I tried to reason and make distinctions, but my brain was still too
tired to answer the helm, so I left it. We ate hot polenta and drank
wonderful coffee, having established our Battery Mess in the porter's
lodge at the entrance to the Villa Lebreton, and persuaded the porter's
wife to cook for us. All the Battery had discovered the polenta at the
porter's lodge and our men crowded the kitchen at all hours of the day.
We all appreciated good food after the short rations of the retreat.

Conversation was intensely depressing when not utterly trivial. I
remember walking round and round the vegetable garden at the back of the
Villa with an Italian friend of mine, trying both to face the facts and
to draw some comfort from them. It was an impossible task. My friend was
full of despair and bitterness. "The fruits of thirty months of war all
lost in two days," he said, "and much more lost besides! What will all
the mothers think, who have lost sons on San Michele and Monte Santo? It
is a common thing in Italy now for families to have lost four or five
sons. What will the mothers of Italy think of this? Would not any of
them be justified in shooting Cadorna? The Third Army should not have
been ordered to retire. They should have counter-attacked instead. But
now would it not be better to make peace at once? Is there no man who
will rise up and say, 'Stop, stop, stop this bloody business now, before
it gets any worse?' Some of our soldiers looked quite pleased to be
retreating. Poor children! They thought the war was over and they were
going home. There is a frightful danger that the leaders,--the generals
and the politicians at Rome,--will say 'fight on!' but the rank and file
will go on breaking. 'We are fighting for Trento and Trieste!' they used
to say, and now they say 'we are organising the defence of the Piave
line!' The Regular soldiers never want the war to end. And soon they
will be distributing medals for the retreat. Medals!"

I could find no words worth saying to him in reply. "What will they be
saying about us now in London and Paris?" he went on. "They will be
saying," I replied, "that help must be sent to you," but my answer I
know sounded flat and empty. "Yes," he said bitterly, "perhaps _now_ you
will send some of your generals and your troops to Italy. And so you
will put us under orders and under obligations to you, and we shall
become your slaves. Italians are used to being looked upon as the slaves
of other nations." "No," I said, "all that is over. Those of us who know
the facts, know what Italy has done and suffered for the Alliance in
this war. It will not be forgotten. Moments of supreme crisis such as
this test the value and the depth of an Alliance. And ours will stand
the test."

But that day he was inconsolable. For Italy was wounded and bleeding,
and the dramatic swiftness and horror of the disaster had bent her pride
and almost broken it. But, though the future seemed black as a night
without stars, the hope of a coming daybreak remained strong in the
hearts of a few. But the struggle ahead would be cruelly hard. What had
Italy left to offer those who would still fight in her defence? Still,
as of old,

   "Only her bosom to die on,
    Only her heart for a home,
    And a name with her children to be,
    From Calabrian to Adrian Sea,
    Mother of cities made free."

Yet this was a rich reward when, a year later, the dawn broke in all
its glory.

I turned over and over in my mind in the weeks and months that followed,
as fresh evidence accumulated, the meaning and the causes of the
disaster of Caporetto, and gradually I came to definite and clear cut
conclusions. It was the Second Army that had been broken, and in the
course of the retreat had almost disappeared. It was a common thing to
hear the Second Army spoken of as a whole Army of cowards and
"defeatists." Many foreign critics, with minds blankly ignorant of
nearly all the facts, seemed to think that the whole business could be
accounted for by a few glib phrases about German and Socialist
propaganda, or the supposed lack of fighting qualities in the Italian
race. Yet it was this same Second Army, which in those now distant days
in August had conquered the Bainsizza Plateau, amid the acclamations of
all the Allied world. Whole Armies do not change their nature in a
night, even when worn out with fighting and heavy casualties. The thing
was not so simple as that.

In fixing responsibility for Caporetto, one must draw a sharp
distinction between responsibility for the original break in a narrow
sector of the line, and responsibility for not making good that break,
before the situation had got hopelessly out of hand. In the former case
the responsibility must rest partly upon the troops and subordinate
Staff charged with holding that narrow sector and partly upon the High
Command; in the latter case the chief responsibility, and a far graver
one, must rest upon the dispositions of the High Command. This was the
view apparently taken by the Commission appointed by the Italian
Government to investigate the whole question, for the three chief
Generals concerned were not only removed from their commands, but given
no further employment and placed upon half-pay.

The original break was due to many causes. The great mass of German
Divisions and Artillery was concentrated in the Caporetto sector. This
fact should have been known to the High Command, and if the Italian
troops holding the line at this point were, for various reasons, of poor
quality, this also should have been known to the High Command, whose
duty it is to know the comparative fighting power of different units.
The High Command, when the battle started, claimed that they had known
beforehand when and where the blow was coming, that all preparations had
been made and that they were fully confident of the result. Such boasts
have been made by other High Commands on other Fronts, on the eve of
other disasters, and even after them. They greatly deepen the
responsibility of those who make them.

The German Batteries on the Italian Front had a much larger supply of
ammunition than the Austrians, including a large quantity of "special
gas" shell. Many Italian troops, both Infantry and Artillery, subjected
to prolonged gas bombardment, found the gas masks provided by the High
Command quite inadequate. It was left for General Diaz some months later
to order the equipment of the whole Italian Army with the British box
respirator.

The number of guns lost by the Second Army was very great. I am told
that one reason for this was the fact that the High Command had for some
weeks been preparing a further big offensive against the Plateau of
Ternova, had concentrated an abnormal number of Batteries on the Second
Army Front, and had pushed the majority of the guns much further up than
would have been justified, if an enemy offensive had been expected.
Then, having made these preparations, the High Command hesitated and
began to change its mind. But the disposition of the forward Batteries,
thoroughly unsound for defensive purposes, was not appreciably altered,
and a quite small enemy advance sufficed to make enormous captures of
guns.

When the attack developed, some of the troops in the Caporetto sector
unquestionably turned and ran, as troops of every great Army in this war
have at times turned and run, under conditions of greater or less
provocation. Then the High Command apparently lost its head, and
attempted to issue to the world a communiqué of a character unparalleled
in the history of this war, naming and cursing, as traitors to their
country, certain particular Infantry Brigades. This document was very
properly suppressed by the Italian Government.

But where were the reserves which the High Command should have had ready
to repair the broken line? And where were the plans for retreating to
prepared positions only a short distance behind? It was well known, and
indeed it used to be another boast of the High Command, that a local
reverse would be of no great importance, seeing that there were no less
than twelve prepared lines between the Front, as it then ran, and Udine.
I have seen some of those lines with my own eyes. I know what great and
patient labour went to the making of them, and I know how strong they
were. But, when the moment came to make use of them, no one outside the
charmed circle of the High Command was in possession of the plans for
their defence, and for falling back upon them in an orderly and
systematic manner. It has been said that these plans could not have been
made known beforehand to the Subordinate Commands for fear they should
fall into the hands of spies. That would have been a small misfortune
compared to what actually befell.[1]

[Footnote 1: In fairness to General Capello, the Second Army Commander,
who had been highly and deservedly praised for the Bainsizza victory in
August, and who was one of the generals removed from his command after
Caporetto, it should be stated that on the latter occasion he was away
from the Front on leave.]

When, owing to the omissions of the High Command, the break in the line
was swiftly widened and the whole defensive scheme of the Second Army
collapsed, it is true that confusion and panic began to spread through
the Second Army like fire through dry grass. But it is not within the
power of common soldiers, and especially of simple unlettered peasantry,
such as most of these soldiers were, to repair the blunders of bad Staff
work, and to make for themselves, on the spur of the moment and in face
of deadly peril, plans which trained brains should have elaborated long
before, at leisure and in safe secluded places. When leadership fails,
the best troops fail too. But let one who comes of a nation, none of
whose troops have ever acted as those troops of the Italian Second Army
acted in those dreadful days, throw the first stone at Italy. That
nation will be hard to find. It is not of this world.  Those who know
the Italian soldier know that no soldier in the world responds more
readily to loyal trust, to common kindliness and to efficient and
inspiring leadership. British and French officers, who have had
opportunities of judging, know this as well as Italians. But the Italian
High Command denied these things to the Italian soldier.[1] It is due to
him and to the good name of Italy, which has been damnably traduced by
prejudiced and ignorant men, that the truth should be spoken.

[Footnote 1: Among other charges which may be brought against the High
Command at this time are, first, their failure to make adequate
provision for the amusement and relaxation of the troops when in rest,
such as the Y.M.C.A. and various concert parties provided for British
troops, to combat inevitable war-weariness; second, failure to increase
the most inadequate scale of rations; and, third, the attempt to apply,
with strange disregard of the very different spirit of the Italian
people, some of the worst and most brutal traditions of German
discipline. All this was altered later by General Diaz and the Orlando
Ministry.]

The dark and tragic story of the Italian retreat is lit up by many deeds
of heroism, wherein the Italian soldier showed all his accustomed
valour. And it was only by the valour of the Italian soldier that the
retreat was stayed on the Piave line, which the High Command pronounced
to be untenable and wished to abandon, but which the Cabinet at Rome,
pinning their faith to the qualities of the Italian soldier rather than
to the opinions of the High Command, ordered to be held at all hazards.
And the Cabinet at Rome was right. The Italian line stiffened and stood
upon the Piave, while the Allied reinforcements were still on the
further side of the Alps. If only Lloyd George and Bissolati had had
their way, and these reinforcements had been sent a few months earlier,
if only we had been able to put a British Army Corps, with its full
complement of aircraft, guns and shells, against the Hermada, if only we
had had half a dozen tanks to send down the Vippacco Valley, what a
different story there would have been to tell!

We ourselves were out of the first stages of that great defence. We had
no ammunition, and we were terribly short of gun stores, though the bare
guns had all been saved. And our men were very short of steel helmets
and box respirators, and the boots and clothing of many were in a
pitiful condition. But a small supply of ammunition came through from
France, and it was decided to send one Section of the Battery into
action on the Piave and the remainder back to Ferrara to refit. All gun
stores and men's equipment were to be pooled, and those going back were
to be stripped for the benefit of those going forward. I remember very
vividly our Battery parade on the morning of the 4th of November, when
we had to take from some men their greatcoats and even their caps,
tunics and boots, in order to make up some sort of equipment for the
Right Section which was going forward with the Major. I was put in
command of the Left Section, stripped bare for its journey to Ferrara.

The evening before our departure I walked up and down the avenue outside
our Villa and talked with Venosta, who had done splendid work in the
retreat. He had heard from the survivors of a Cavalry Regiment, who had
passed back along the road an hour before, that a Turkish Division was
in Udine, and Turkish cavalry in Palmanova. Bulgarians also were said to
be on this Front, raping, after Serbs, Greeks and Rumanians, Italians
also. It was said that Turks had been on Faiti and Volconiac at the end.
I had no sure evidence of this, but, if it was true, the Turks'
notorious incapacity for an offensive would help to explain our
surprising escape. What we had needed, all through the days of the
retreat, was enough rain to swell the rivers and make heavy the roads.
What we had got, after the first three days, was brilliant sunshine. The
stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against Italy. "Dio uno ed
unno!" said one Italian bitterly.

CHAPTER XXV

FERRARA, ARQUATA AND THE CORNICE ROAD

We reached Ferrara at 5 a.m. and drove in lorries from the railway
station past the Castello of the d'Estes to the Palestro Barracks, the
Depôt of the 14th Regiment of Italian Field Artillery. Here we were to
be lodged by the Italian military authorities. We were received with
every consideration and great hospitality. Our men had excellent
quarters in the Barracks. Our officers were invited to have their meals
in the Italian Artillery officers' Mess, which was a large and
comfortable place and where the food was not only good, but very much
cheaper than could have been got outside. The Colonel also offered to
put riding horses at the disposal of any of us who should care to ride.
I was much struck by the sensible lack of ceremony of this Italian Mess,
by comparison with similar Depôt Messes in our own Army. There was no
waiting in the anteroom for senior officers who were late, no asking
permission of senior officers to leave the table early. Within the hours
fixed for meals everyone came in and out as they pleased. There was no
special table for the Staff, no rule against bringing evening papers
into dinner, no aloofness, no pomposity. The only un-English formalities
were the habit of turning and bowing as one left the Mess, if a number
of officers were still present, and the universal Italian custom by
which a newcomer at his first appearance would walk round and shake
hands in turn with all those whom he did not know and introduce himself
to them by name.

We were also invited to become members during our stay of the Circolo
Negozianti, or Merchants' Club, of Ferrara. This Club had spacious
premises in an old Palazzo, and was the warmest place in the town,
having a most efficient system of central heating.

Ferrara is spread over a large area relatively to its population; it has
broad streets and very few slums. But it has come down in the world
since the Renaissance. Degenerate descendants of the d'Estes of that
time stripped many of the Palazzi of their artistic beauties and sold
them to help pay their debts. Ferrara is a city of old Palazzi, street
after street of them, inhabited mainly now by well-to-do peasants, who
take a pride in keeping up their exteriors. One of the most interesting
sights in the city is the Palazzo Schifanoia, now used as a museum and
containing frescoes by Cossa and Cosimo Tura. But what most appealed to
me was the superb western façade of the Cathedral.

In peace time Ferrara is prosperous, though a little isolated from the
main currents of Italian life. It is the chief centre of food
distribution for this part of the country, and is well known for its
bakeries. It is also an important centre for the hemp export trade.

After two days at Ferrara I was chosen to go to Arquata Scrivia, a
little town on the main line north of Genoa. This had been selected as
the Base for the British Forces in Italy, and I was to get in touch with
the Ordnance people there, to give them a list of our really urgent
requirements and try to hasten their delivery, so as to get us back into
action as soon as possible. Siramo, an Italian Artillery officer who was
attached to us for _liaison_, accompanied me.

The ordinary passenger train for Bologna was three and a half hours
late. Special trains were coming through every ten minutes from Treviso
and Venice packed with refugees, going southwards. The organisation of
the Italian railways at this time for clearing the refugees from the
righting zone was exceedingly good. Siramo thought that, if Venice had
to be abandoned, the Germans and Austrians would not damage it. I felt
no such security. That night we stopped at Milan. Wild stories of
"tradimento" were in the air. It was being said, for instance, that two
Generals of the Second Army had been marched through their troops in
handcuffs under a guard of Carabinieri. It was also officially
announced that Diaz had replaced Cadorna in command of the Italian
Armies.

Next day we reached Arquata amid the tumble of the Ligurian Hills, whose
sides were clothed with chestnuts and oaks and vine terraces. We found
British Staff, Sanitary Sections and Ordnance already in possession. The
Ordnance were occupying a large villa just outside the town. My old
friend Shield, whom I had known at Palmanova, was there, but most of the
others were new arrivals from France. They were surprisingly full of
cheerfulness, as _imboscati_ are often apt to be, even when things are
going badly at the Front. The Italian disaster evidently meant very
little to them; they hardly realised it at all. They were the first
cheerful people I had seen since the retreat began, and it was no doubt
good for Siramo and myself to be cheered up. But it grated on both of us
a little.

At my first interview I got the impression that the Ordnance were
surprisingly efficient and would be very prompt in giving us what we
wanted. But I gradually discovered that they really possessed very
little of what they first promised me, and that nothing was known for
certain as to when further stores would arrive. I telephoned to Ferrara
that the immediate prospects were poor, and was told in reply to wait
three or four days and see how much turned up. Having pestered various
Ordnance officers to the limit of their endurance, I therefore decided
to go away for two days.

Siramo went for two days to his family at Turin and I took the train to
Genoa, arriving in the early afternoon. After lunch I set out to walk
eastwards along the Cornice Road. It was a relief to my thoughts and
feelings to be quite alone. The day was windy and sunless and rather
cold, but the warm and audacious colouring of the Villas and the little
fishing villages seemed almost to draw sunshine out of the dull sky. I
stopped at Sturla and drank two cups of coffee and ate some biscuits,
and decided to walk on to Nervi. It was now near the hour of sunset and
the sun, having kept invisible all day, half broke through the clouds,
turning them first red and then golden. So the sky was when I came to
Quarto dei Mille, with its monument looking out to sea, that historic
place whence Garibaldi and the Thousand set sail for their great
adventure, the liberation of Sicily and Naples, and the unification of
Italy, with British warships following them, some say by chance, so that
the enemies of Italy dared not interrupt their passage.

Then said I to myself, standing all alone at Quarto, "Italy will not be
defeated, nor even mainly saved from defeat by foreign aid. The
strongest and best of her children will pull her through, even though
they be not all the nation. But the rest will do their share also, and
will follow, when the bravest lead. How young, and how uncertain of
herself as yet, is Italy! And yet, how lovable, how well worth serving!"
The Germans with their "special gas" and with other factors in their
favour, counted on breaking, not only the line of the Second Army, but
the morale of the Italian people. For a moment they seemed to have
succeeded. In the darkest days I talked with many whose stuffing seemed
all gone. But then, with the promise of Allied help, with the sight of
even a handful of new French and British uniforms, and under the spell
of the oratory of their statesmen and their journalists, things began to
change and Italian hearts grew brave again.

The Italians are a mercurial people. If they are more easily cast down
by defeat than we British, they are more easily encouraged by even the
distant prospect of victory, and they react to influences that would
leave us unmoved. The coarse insults of the enemy press were everywhere
angrily quoted, and the national spirit rose to a red glow of passion.
The Socialists Turati and Treves,--the latter the author of the famous
phrase, "nessuno in trincee quest' inverno,"[1]--who before Caporetto
had criticised the war as aggressive, imperialist and unnecessary, said
now that all Italians must unite and fight on to drive back the invader
from Italian soil. And cool brains, such as Nitti and Einaudi,
reinforced all this with logical demonstrations of the economic
impossibility of a separate peace, with the enemy Powers strained to the
utmost by the blockade and Italy dependent on the Allies for shipping,
food and coal. The Germans would have done far more wisely, if, instead
of attacking, they had aimed only at holding the Italian Army along its
old line.

[Footnote 1: "No one in the trenches this winter."]

I walked on from Quarto to Nervi and, as it was getting dark, I decided
to take a tram for the last few kilometres. But all the trams were
standing still, the current having been switched off for several hours.
So I stood on the step of a tram and talked to the conductor about the
war, and tried to cheer him up by telling him that the Germans were on
their last legs, and were making their last great effort, and that the
Allies had only to hold together a little longer, and throw sufficient
force against the enemy here in Italy, in order to see a far bigger and
more precipitate and disastrous retreat than Caporetto, and next time in
the other direction. All this I not only said, but firmly believed (and
it all came true within a year). At first he was very despondent, but he
warmed up as I proceeded, and began to gesticulate again and regain
animation and compliment me on my Italian. And then the current also was
restored, and the tram moved on, and we came to Nervi, where I dined
well and slept at the Albergo Cristoforo Colombo. I am not in general an
admirer of palm trees, but they are sometimes impressive in the dusk,
towering over one's head, as they do at Nervi, in the long mixed avenue
of palms and orange trees which leads down to the station from the town.

Next morning I got up early and walked back towards Genoa along the Via
Marina. The sun was shining on the sea and the dark rocks, the stone
pines and the great aloes and the brightly coloured villas. There was an
exhilaration in the air and I was in the midst of beauty, and, for the
first time for many days, I was for a little while really happy. Later
on I took a tram back to Genoa, and walked up to the tall lighthouse on
the further side of the town, and looked westward at the great curve of
the shore, beyond the breakwater and the sands.

In some of the stations along the line were placards, "Long live great
old England," "Welcome to the valiant British Army," "Vive la France,"
"Vive la victorieuse Armée de Verdun." The first of the Allied
reinforcements were arriving.

At Arquata station I met an advance party of the Northumberland
Fusiliers. They told me that they had been quite moved by their
wonderful welcome on the way through Italy and by all the hospitality
shown to their officers and men at the stations where they had stopped.
It gave me a queer thrill to see British Infantrymen again after many
months, and this time on Italian soil.

After various orders and counter-orders I left Arquata for Ferrara on
the 16th, with two truckloads of stores. But this was only a very small
proportion of the minimum which we required.

CHAPTER XXVI

REFITTING AT FERRARA

I got back to Ferrara on the evening of November 17th, and shared a
bedroom with Jeune, who had returned from leave in England, having
missed all our most unpleasant experiences. Our brother officers of the
Italian Field Artillery were very hospitable and courteous to us through
those weeks of waiting. We could do nothing till the Ordnance sent us
gun stores from Arquata, and these dribbled in very slowly, a few odds
and ends at a time.

I often went out riding on the Piazza d'Arme and along the ramparts and
in the country round Ferrara with Italian officers. Days were still very
anxious, and the news from the Front not always good, and one rather
avoided talking about the war. But one evening at dinner I succeeded in
piercing the polite reserve of a little Captain who was sitting next to
me. "Italy should have made it a condition of her intervention," he
said, "that the other Allies should have sent troops to the Italian
Front. Also more guns and war material. Italy, at the beginning of her
war, had many heroes but few guns. The other Allies, equally with Italy,
are without statesmen. Your Lloyd George is energetic, but----! The
British are not really at war with Austria. They have soft sentiments
towards her and don't want her to lose too much. The Jugo-Slav
propaganda was at its height, and was being encouraged in Paris and
London, at the very moment when Italy was being pressed by the French
and British to enter the war.

"We have made too many offensives on our own, unaided. Cadorna should
have refused, but he went on and on. He sacrificed thousands of lives
uselessly. He demanded too much of his troops. He did not understand
them. This last disaster was caused by Croats and Bulgarians, who spoke
Italian perfectly, having lived among us and taken degrees at our
Universities, getting through our lines in the first confusion, dressed
in Italian uniform, and sending false telephone messages and signals in
our own cipher, ordering a general retreat.[1] It was men from ----,[2]
who first ran away at Rombon and Tolmino. It has been often proved in
the history of our country that those men have no courage. Italians have
too little unity."

[Footnote 1: I heard this story many times and I believe this was one of
the causes of the rapid increase of the first confusion. The Austrians
had tried this trick without success against the Third Army on the
Carso, as had the Germans against us in France. There must obviously be
a certain amount of confusion already existing, if the trick is to have
any chance of succeeding.]

[Footnote 2: A certain province in Italy, not his own.]

He went on to speak of economic difficulties. "Italy is poor," he said,
"and the Allies are rich. Yet coal costs four times as much in Italy as
in France, and shipping is hardly to be had. Our Government has never
driven hard enough bargains with the other Allies. After all, Italy came
into the war as a volunteer, and not under the conscription of old
treaties. But the Allies give her no credit for this. The French, since
the war began, have recovered all their old 'blague.' They talk
incessantly of what they have done, and despise everyone else. But look
how unstable they are politically! They change their ministries, as
often as some men change their mistresses. The Pope, too, is an enemy of
Italy and a friend of Austria. He aims at the restoration of his
temporal power. Many of the priests went about, both before and after
Caporetto, trying to betray their country. Some told the soldiers that
God had sent the disaster of Caporetto to show them the folly and the
sinfulness of loving their corruptible country here below in poor
earthly Italy, better than the incorruptible country of all good
Catholics, God's eternal kingdom in the skies!"

He spoke bitterly, as was not unnatural.

I made the acquaintance also in the Mess of a Medical Officer, named
Rossi, in peace time a University Professor of Nervous Pathology, who
was now in charge of a hospital for "nervosi," or shell-shock cases,
four miles outside the town. One afternoon Jeune and I accepted an
invitation to visit this hospital. We drove out to it in a carrozza,
accompanied by Rossi and a young woman, who went there daily to teach
some of the illiterate patients to read and write.

No one can begin to understand what modern war means without some
personal acquaintance with shell-shock cases. They are, especially for
non-combatants, the most instructive of all the fruits of war, much more
instructive than dead bodies or men without limbs. And then, having
watched and talked or tried to talk with a variety of these still living
creatures, let any man, even a profiteer or a theologian, look into his
heart and ask himself whether he really agrees with the Chaplain, whom I
have already quoted, that "three or four years of war may be
tremendously worth while."

It needs a greater pen than mine to do justice to all we saw that
afternoon, for we went through all the wards and saw all the sights
there were to see. We saw a young Lieutenant, with large staring eyes,
sitting up in bed. When we approached him, he jumped round in his bed
very violently, as though his body had been shot out of a gun, and went
on staring at us, speechless and with eyes full of wild terror. We saw
two soldiers in the corner of a ward, their heads wobbling in perfect
rhythm, ceaselessly from side to side, like the pendulum of a clock,
with dead expressionless faces. We saw men cowering beneath their bed
clothes, trembling with an endless terror. We saw a man who for months
had quite lost his speech, and was now just able to whisper, almost
inaudibly, "papa" and "mama," a middle-aged man with a beard. We saw a
man with frightened eyes, like a child in a nightmare, with many of the
outward signs of having been gassed, struggling for breath,
gesticulating feebly, trying to ward off some imaginary blow. He had not
been gassed, but wounded in the head. He was alone in a blue ward, where
all our faces looked yellow. We saw a youth lying asleep, white as a
sheet and with hardly any flesh left on his bones. He had been asleep
for two months without ever waking. We saw a splendid, tall, bearded
man, a Cavalry Captain, with a deep voice and a firm handgrip, who could
realise the present, but had forgotten all the past. We saw a multitude
of minor "tremblers," and men undergoing electrical treatment for
paralysis and stiffness of various limbs. One little man, another
University Professor, who was almost paralysed in both legs, tried to
advance to meet us and nearly fell forward on the ground at our feet. I
spoke also to a young man with a paralysed back and left arm. I said I
hoped he would soon be better. "Yes," he said, "I hope soon to go back
to the Front." For a moment I thought this was irony addressed to a
countryman of Mr Lloyd George. But it wasn't. He really meant it. We
went into the Convalescents' Mess. There were about twenty present,
smiling and very gentle and quiet, like men who were not yet quite sure
of the world. One elderly man, a Medical Captain, said to me, very
softly, that it was a great pleasure to see visitors from the outside,
"especially our Allies." At that moment I could easily have wept. Such
sights as I had seen did not physically sicken, nor even much horrify,
me. They just tautened all my nerves and made me feel that all my
questions were impertinent, and all my good wishes flat and empty, and
that I resembled a visitor to a Zoo.

On the way back to Ferrara we talked of literature and Rossi, basing
himself chiefly on Wells and Kipling, said that the English, judged by
their modern writers, seemed to be a race "logical, but a little
isolated."

Two days later the Major and the Right Section of the Battery came to
Ferrara, being replaced on the Piave by a section of another Battery. On
the 1st of December British Infantry, belonging to the XIVth Corps,
moved into the lines for the first time, taking over the Montello
sector, to the south of the Italian Fourth Army. This sector was to be
held by British troops for four months, but it is worth while again to
emphasise the fact that nearly a month had now elapsed since the great
Retreat had been brought to an end by the unaided effort of Italian
troops. The situation now seemed well in hand, and a further break not
at all likely.

There had been a striking scene in the Italian Chamber about this time,
when the Prime Minister, Orlando, announced that high military opinion
had been opposed to the holding of the Piave line, recommending a
further retreat to the line of the Mincio, or the Adige, or even the Po,
which would have involved the surrender of Venice, Padua, Vicenza and
Verona. But the Cabinet at Rome had rejected these recommendations and
ordered that the Piave line should be held at all costs, and the valour
of the Italian common soldier had triumphed over the forebodings of the
generals.

On the 8th, our re-equipment being at last complete, we were warned to
join the XIth British Corps on the arrival of our transport. The end of
our stay at Ferrara was now in sight, and our last days were full of
partings. The Major told me how one morning a little old man, apparently
an artisan, ran after him down the road and, speaking excellent French,
said how fine the British soldiers looked, and how splendid the news of
the capture of Jerusalem was, and then insisted on his going into a café
and drinking a glass of vermouth with him and, on parting, held his hand
for several moments, gazing into his eyes with a look of affection and
pride.

On the 9th a little ceremony took place in the Artillery Mess, where the
British officers presented a silver cup, suitably inscribed, to their
brother officers of the Italian Artillery. There was a large gathering.
My own Major, who was in command of British troops at Ferrara, made the
presentation, and the Italian Commandant made an eloquent reply.

On the 10th I told the page boy at the Circolo that the future of the
world was in the hands of himself and the rest of the young, and that
they must see to it that there were no more wars. This speech made him
open his big brown eyes a bit wider! I had often talked to this boy
before, and he was, I think, rather interested in me, thinking me no
doubt a queer and unusual sort of person. He used to steal moments to
come and enter into conversation with me when none of the older club
servants were in sight. If any of them appeared in the distance, he used
to pretend that I had called him for the purpose of ordering a drink,
and bolt to the bar.

On the 11th another presentation ceremony took place, this time at the
Circolo. Those of us who had enjoyed honorary membership here presented
to the Club two small silver clocks. The Major again made a short speech
and the President of the Club replied, expressing the hope that the
hours might be short, which these clocks would record before the hour of
final victory. The cordiality of all the members of the Club at this
meeting was very memorable. One old gentleman of 76 years of age told me
that I was the very image of his son who was serving at the front in the
Artillery, and with tears in his eyes kissed me on both cheeks. "Permit
this sign of affection," he said, "seeing that here we are in the midst
of friends."

That afternoon a few of us had tea for the last time at Finzi's, a
favourite haunt of mine between the Castello and the Cathedral. After I
had said a few words of farewell, Signor Finzi said to me, in one of
those perfectly turned compliments which Italians always pay to
foreigners endeavouring to speak their language, "Lei parla la lingua di
Dante,"[1] and Signora Finzi gave to each of us a small Italian flag.

[Footnote 1: "You speak the language of Dante."]

That night our transport arrived, and our departure was fixed for the
following morning. The 12th of December was a day that I shall vividly
remember for the rest of my life. We left Ferrara about 1 p.m. after
one of the most enthusiastic demonstrations I have ever seen. That
morning the town had been placarded far and wide with the following
poster:--

_Comitato di Preparazione Civile._[1]

CITTADINI,

Stamane alle ore undici e trenta (11.30) gli Artiglieri inglesi
muoveranno dal Quartiere Palestro diretti alia Stazione Ferroviaria.
Essi partono verso il fronte, per difendere cogli eroici soldati
d'Italia e di Francia il conteso e sacro suolo della patria, per
combattere la barbaria tedesca, che tenta invano di avanzare contro il
baluardo offerto dai petti dei soldati di tre nazioni.

CITTADINI,

Vi invitiamo ad accorrere ed a portare il vostro saluto ai fedeli e
valorosi Alleati. Essi debbono sentire che i vostri cuori palpitano, con
loro, di speranza e di fede.

FERRARA. 11-12 dicembre 1917,
IL PRESIDENTE AVOGLI.

[Footnote 1: _Committee of Civilian Preparation._

FELLOW CITIZENS,

This morning at 11.30 a.m. the British Gunners will march out from the
Palestro Barracks to the Railway Station. They are leaving for the
Front, to defend alongside of the heroic soldiers of Italy and France
the disputed and sacred soil of our country, and to combat the German
barbarians, who strive in vain to advance against the rampart which is
formed by the breasts of the soldiers of three nations.

FELLOW CITIZENS,

We invite you to be present and to salute our brave and faithful Allies.
They should be made to feel that your hearts, in unison with theirs,
throb with hope and faith.]

By eleven o'clock a large crowd was already gathering outside the
Barracks. At half-past we marched out into the street. In front of us
went the municipal brass band, gay with cocks' feathers, and
school-children carrying four banners on long flagstaffs. There was
tumultuous cheering and clapping from a dense crowd. Flowers were
showered upon us, and a very handsome girl gave me a bouquet of red
roses. The band played impossible march music, so that we weren't able
to keep much of a step.

But the enthusiasm was intense. Spectators thronged all the windows
overlooking our route, and the cheering crowd stretched thick and
unbroken along both sides of the street all the way. I noticed a
specially enthusiastic group on the steps of the Castello, and several
busy photographers. In between the efforts of the band our men sang.
Outside the station we marched past the Italian General Commanding the
District. Then we were halted and the General made a speech. I happened
to look round, and found standing beside me, looking up at me, wide-eyed
and wondering, the page boy from the Circolo, whom I had harangued on
the destiny of the world's youth, and afterwards tipped. The band was
playing over and over again, at short intervals, God Save the King, the
Marcia Reale, the Marseillaise, the Brabançonne and the Marcia degli
Alpini. Whenever any of these national anthems was played, all the
troops stood at attention, and we officers at the salute.

Then a little man with a black beard and an eager manner stepped forward
and mounted a chair, and on behalf of the Association of Italian
Teachers wished us good luck. He spoke in English. He told us that his
wife was "an Englishman," and recalled the names of Garibaldi and
Gladstone, Palmerston and Cavour. He then presented to the Major an
Italian Flag, which was handed to our Battery Sergeant-Major to be
carried at the head of the troops as they marched into the station. Many
Italian officers were present to say personal good-byes, and an immense
crowd was on the platform cheering and singing, and distributing gifts
and refreshments to our men. One gift was a little piece of tricolour
ribbon, which an old woman gave to one of us. It had a note pinned to it
addressed "to a brave British soldier," saying that she had a son at the
Front who always carried just such a little piece of ribbon as a
talisman, cut off the same roll, and that it had always kept him safe,
and that it would keep the British soldier safe too. The note was signed
"Tua Madrina" ("your god-mother").

At last it seemed that everyone was aboard, and the train started. But
it was then discovered that the Major, Jeune and Manzoni had been left
behind, not expecting the train to start so soon. They had chased it for
a hundred yards down the line, but failed to catch it up. So the
stationmaster telephoned to Rovigo to stop the train there till the
three missing ones arrived, which they ultimately did, riding on an
engine specially placed at their disposal. So ended our stay at Ferrara,
in a blaze of wild enthusiasm. And I believe that, collectively, we left
a very good impression behind us.

PART V

A YEAR OF RESISTANCE AND OF PREPARATION

CHAPTER XXVII

IN STRATEGIC RESERVE

Our train reached Cittadella shortly after dusk. We interviewed a
British R.T.O., who had only taken up his duties five minutes' before
our arrival, and so not unnaturally knew nothing about us. The Major
proposed that the train should be put into a siding and that we should
spend the night in it. This was done. We went into Cittadella, but found
everything in complete darkness, most of the houses sandbagged, and all
shops, cafés and inns closed at dusk by order of the military. We
succeeded, however, in getting a meal of sorts, and then went back to
the train and turned in early. We were woken up a little after midnight
by two British Staff officers, who were very vague and ignorant, but
told us to go next morning to San Martino di Lupari, a little village
midway between Cittadella and Castelfranco. This we did and found pretty
good billets. Monte Grappa loomed over us to the north, deep in snow. I
did not go into Cittadella by daylight, but only saw its battlemented
outer walls.

Then for a few days nothing happened, except that everyone seemed to
have caught a cold. We were now part of the XIth British Corps, who were
concentrated in the surrounding district and formed for the moment a
strategic reserve, which might be sent anywhere according to the
development of the situation. If nothing particular happened, we should
probably go into the line south of the XIVth British Corps on the Piave.
If, on the other hand, the Italians were driven back in the mountains to
the north of us, or were forced to retire down the Brenta Valley,--and
this danger had not yet quite passed,--we should move up the mountains
and take over part of the Italian line, with the French probably on our
right. We received tracings of several possible lines of defence, on the
plain itself and on the near side of the mountain crest, described as
the "Blue Line," the "Green Line," etc., which we were required to
reconnoitre with a view to finding Battery positions and O.P.'s. They
were all very awkward lines to defend, as the enemy would have splendid
observation and we practically none at all.

On the 15th the Major went out in the car reconnoitring to the east. He
met some Alpini on the road to whom he said, "Fa bel tempo,"[1] and they
replied, "Le montagne sono sempre belle;"[2] also an old man who had
never seen British soldiers before, and was tremendously excited and
pleased, and shouted with joy.

[Footnote 1: "It's beautiful weather."]

[Footnote 2: "The mountains are always beautiful."]

On the 16th the Major went out again with Jeune and myself to look for
Battery positions for the defence of the line at the foot of the
mountains. We went through Cittadella and Bassano, then southwards along
the Brenta to Nove, and then back through Marostica and Bassano. Bassano
is a delightful old town, with many frescoes remaining on the outer