From St Peter's we drove up the Janiculum, stopping on the way at the

convent of S. Onofrio, where Tasso passed the last three weeks of his

life and where a Tasso Museum has been accumulated. Very admirable is

the equestrian statue of Garibaldi on the Janiculum, both as sculpture

and for its details of intention, such as that sideways turning of his

head, looking down hill at the Vatican, as though saying, "Non ti

dimentico,"--"I do not forget you, my old enemy." The view of Rome from

this point is magnificent, the best that I have seen, though the view

from the Pincio only just falls short of it.

Thence, passing outside the old city walls through the Porta San

Pancrazio, we stood on ground made memorable by Garibaldi's defence of

the Roman Republic in 1849, and went down, past the. Pope's monument to

the French who died fighting to defend his Temporal Power against the

Garibaldini, into the beautiful garden of the Villa Pamfili. "Attendono

il finale risorgimento,"[1] says the Pope's Italian version on the

monument. It is an ironical phrase in view of the history of the next

twenty years. "They did not have long to wait," I said, "a bird in the

hand is worth two in the bush." And my guide said, I thought well, of

the French that they are a people of great gifts and of most generous

mind, but that their rulers have often showed "un po' di volubilità, un

po' di fantasia."

[Footnote 1: "They await the final resurrection." But "risorgimento" to

most Italians suggests modern history more than theology.]

We visited last of all the Depôt of the Bersaglieri in Trastevere, where

is also the famous Bersagliere Museum. Here we were received and shown

round with great courtesy by the Colonel commanding the Depôt, a

handsome man with most sad eyes, but full of great regimental pride in

this creation, intimately and characteristically Italian, of General La

Marmora.

In the Museum, among much that was trivial, I found much that was

interesting and even deeply moving: the relics of Enrico Toti, an artist

who, having only one leg, joined the Bersaglieri Ciclisti as a volunteer

at the beginning of the war, and rode up mountain tracks on a bicycle

with a single pedal, and died, after acts of the greatest heroism and

after sustaining for many hours grave wounds, crying with his last

breath "Avanti Savoia!", upon whose dead body and brave departed spirit

was conferred the most rare Gold Medal for Valour; photographs of all

the Bersaglieri, who since the foundation of the Regiment have won the

Gold Medal, some twenty of them, hanging together on one wall, all dead

now; the steel helmet of a Bersagliere Major, killed on the Carso, while

leading his men; this is all that they found of him, but it has three

holes through the front, sufficient proof, said the Colonel, that he was

not going backward when he died; a menu card, signed by all the officers

of a Bersagliere Battalion, who dined together on the eve of the

victorious action of Col Valbella last January, in which they played a

worthy part.

The Colonel told me that his own son was killed and is buried beyond the

Isonzo, near Cervignano. It had been suggested to him that he should

have the body brought home, but he preferred to leave it where it fell.

"C'è un' idea che è morta lì," he said, "It is an idea which has died

there. Some day, if I live, I shall make a pilgrimage thither, but the

Austrians may, by now, have destroyed the grave."

Outside in the courtyard, where the Colonel took leave of us, I saw many

young Bersaglieri, the latest batches of recruits, mere boys. "They are

splendid material," he said, with a military pride, not without a

half-regretful tenderness, "one can make anything out of them." They

were, indeed, incomparable human stuff, whether for the purposes of

peace or war. They seemed to have the joy of the spring in their eyes,

just as that middle-aged Regular soldier had in his the sadness of

autumn. And amid all the beauty of Rome in the spring, I was haunted by

the grim refrain, "Nella primavera si combatte e si muore, o

soldato,"--"In the springtide men fight and die, young soldier."

* * * * *

I went away from Rome strengthened in my previous judgment that the

Italians are not a militarist nation. There was no sign of the

militarist, as distinct from the military, spirit at the Bersagliere

Depôt. The relations of the Colonel and Signer Marini illustrated this.

They had never met, nor, I think, heard of one another before. Yet this

little civilian seemed to find it quite natural to march into a military

barracks without any preliminary inquiries, to walk upstairs and

straight into the Commanding Officer's office and, not finding the

Commanding Officer there, to send a message into the Officer's Mess,

and, the Commanding Officer having come out, to present his card,

without any appearance of servility or undue deference, and to ask to be

taken round. And the Colonel seemed to see nothing odd in these

proceedings, but placed himself at once at our disposal and showed us

everything and talked without aloofness and without reserve to both of

us. I could not help thinking that things would not have happened quite

like this at the Depôt of a crack regiment in most other European

capitals.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE FIFTEENTH OF JUNE, 1918

I happened to be the officer on duty in the Battery Command Post on the

night of June 14th-15th. There had been a thick fog for several days and

not much firing. No one expected anything unusual. The Battery was much

below strength owing to the ravages of what the doctors in the mountains

called "mountain fever" and the doctors on the plain called influenza.

We had, if I remember rightly, about forty men in Hospital owing to this

cause alone. I myself had a touch of it, but, thinking I could probably

count on a quiet night, I refused the offer of a brother officer to take

my place, coldly calculating that a few nights later, when it would be

my turn to take his duty, I might have more to do. But my hopes of much

sleep were soon dispersed.

Orders came in from Brigade for an elaborate counter-battery shoot with

gas shell, in two parts, one between 11 p.m. and midnight, the other

between 2 and 3 a.m. We had never fired gas shell from six-inch

howitzers before, though we had been warned that we should soon be

required to do so. We had no gas shell in the Battery, but we were

informed by Brigade that a sufficient quantity would arrive by the time

the shoot was to begin. In fact, however, the first consignment of gas

shell was not delivered in time to enable us to take part in the first

part of the bombardment, and I was told not to fire high explosive

instead, as that would tend to disperse the gas which other Batteries

would be simultaneously firing on the same targets. The method adopted

on this and later occasions, when gas was used, was that a number of our

own Batteries should concentrate for, say, five minutes at the fastest

rate of fire possible on a particular enemy Battery, then all switch

together to another enemy Battery, and so on, all coming back together

on to the first enemy Battery after an interval sufficient to lull the

human elements forming part of the target into a delusive sense of

security and a return to slumber without their masks, or, alternatively,

to make them wear their masks continously for prolonged hours of

expectation, thus subjecting them to much discomfort, depriving them of

sleep, lowering their morale, and making them likelier victims for fresh

forms of devilment in the morning. War is a filthy thing, and must be

stamped out ruthlessly. The facts of gas will have helped to drive this

simple conviction into many a thick, egotistical, unsensitive head. But,

as has been wisely said, you cannot half make a war of the modern sort,

you cannot let a faint savour of regret hang about all your actions, and

enervate your will. And, in plain, brutal truth, our employment of gas

was a big factor in determining and hastening the end. Of the military

efficiency of our gas tactics we had much evidence later on.

We joined in the second part of the gas bombardment in the early hours

of the 15th of June, and, when this was nearly over, I got orders to

fire at my leisure ten rounds of high explosive at "Archibald," which

was our code name for a certain Austrian searchlight, which used to

sweep round the country from the summit of Monte Mosciagh on the far

side of the Plateau. So I fired the ten rounds, and the officer at one

of the O.P.'s, whom I had previously warned of my intention, reported

that Archibald had gone out after the fourth round, and that, judged by

the flashes of their explosions, all the rounds had seemed pretty near.

It was now nearly half-past three, and, conscious that I had a high and

rising temperature, I determined to lie down and get a few hours' sleep.

Some of the gas shell which had been intended for the first part of the

bombardment, but had arrived about four hours too late, was still being

unloaded from lorries on the road outside. But I asked a Corporal to

look after this, and send the unloading party to bed as soon as they had

finished.

I had just fallen asleep when the Corporal awakened me. Were the men, he

asked, to go on unloading the shell? Still half asleep, I asked why not?

He said that the road was being shelled. I pulled myself together and

went to the door of the Command Post. Not only the road, but the whole

Battery position and apparently the whole area for some distance round,

was being bombarded very violently. So I ordered every one to take

cover. It was just 3.45 a.m.

I thought for a moment that this was merely Austrian retaliation for our

first use of gas and for the shots at Archibald. In fact, it was the

beginning of the big Austrian offensive, which had long been

prearranged. During the last few days the Austrians had brought up a

large number of new guns to our sector, and had placed a number of them

right out in the open. And owing to the thick fog our airmen had been

able to see nothing. The bombardment continued with great fury for

several hours, with guns of all calibres, but fortunately mostly small,

with shrapnel, high explosive, and gas, chiefly lacrimatory, but mixed

with a certain quantity of lethal. Luckily we had pretty good cover,

mainly _caverne_ blasted in the rock. The Command Post itself was proof

against anything less than a direct hit from a pretty heavy shell. It

was also supposed to be gas proof, but was not. I collected about half a

dozen men in it who had nowhere else to go, including two A.S.C. lorry

drivers.

Early on, a young Bombardier was hit rather badly in the leg just

outside. We brought him into the Command Post, bandaged his wound and

laid him on the camp bed, on which I had been hoping to get some sleep,

and there left him till the shelling should abate and it should be

reasonably safe to carry him to the dressing-station a quarter of a mile

away. He lay there, I remember, looking like a little tired cherub, and

another Bombardier sat beside him and tried to persuade him to go to

sleep. They were very great friends, those two boys, both signallers,

and inseparable both on and off duty. The one who was not wounded went

out that same morning and spent hours repairing telephone lines under

very heavy fire, for which act he won the Military Medal. The other,

months later, when his wound was healed and he had returned to the

Battery, also won the Military Medal for gallantry on the Piave.

The conduct of the two lorry drivers afforded a strong contrast in

psychology. One, a man of middle age, was superbly cheerful. "They can't

keep this up much longer," he said several times with a placid smile,

"they haven't the stuff to do it." The other, though younger, was a

bunch of visible nerves. A shell exploded just behind the Command Post

and violently shook the whole structure and a storm of stones hit the

log framework. He collapsed on the floor, and was convinced for a couple

of minutes that he had been hit, and for some time after that he was

suffering from shell shock.

Such illusions come easily at such times. A gas shell made a direct hit

on one of our smaller dug-outs. A Sergeant inside was badly gassed. They

put him for the moment in a gas-proof shelter, higher up the hill, and

several hours later I saw him being carried away on a stretcher,

apparently lifeless. But he finally pulled through. A gunner who was

with him in the dug-out came running into the Command Post crying out

that he also was gassed. I made him lie flat on the floor, and told him

to keep as quiet as he could. And then I watched his breathing. It was

clear after a minute or two that, if he had had a breath of gas at all,

it was only of the slightest. But, when I told him this, he was very

unwilling to believe me. Another man was hit just outside, and lay on

the ground screaming like an animal in pain. Him, too, we carried into

the Command Post, and, later, on a stretcher to the dressing station.

Meanwhile all the telephone lines had gone owing to the shelling,

cutting us off from Brigade, other Batteries and O.P.'s. But

intermittent communication was maintained by runners, and signallers

were out, hour after hour, mending breaks in the line and showing their

invariable gallantry. Till about six o'clock our orders were to lie

low, to keep under cover and not to open fire. The rain of shells

continued without slackening. We were wonderfully lucky to get off as

lightly as we did. It is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of war,

how many shells can fall in a position of no great size, and yet do very

little damage. It was estimated, and I think quite soberly, that at

least two thousand rounds were pumped into our Battery position that

morning.

It was soon after six that we got orders, passed along from the next

Battery up the road, to open fire on our "counter-preparation target."

This was a sign that the advance of the Austrian Infantry had either

begun, or was thought to be imminent. They attacked, in fact, about a

quarter to seven on our sector. Their synchronising was faulty, as

between the different sectors attacked. Some went forward earlier and

others later than had been intended. They were all newly equipped and

were carrying full packs and blankets on their backs. They had been told

by their officers that this was to be the last great offensive of the

war, that they were going to drive us headlong down the mountain side,

that after two days they would be in Verona, and after ten days in Rome.

They were not told that they had British troops in front of them. They

came forward bravely and with great determination, in five successive

waves.

On the British left Divisional Front, to the west of us, they gained a

large initial success, and pushed us back well behind our first line of

guns. Here for some time the situation looked serious. But next day

strong counter-attacks by British and Italian troops restored the line,

our lost guns were retaken and the retreating Austrians suffered great

slaughter and demoralisation.

On the British right Divisional Front, in support of which our Brigade

was operating, the British 23rd Division fought a fight worthy of their

high reputation. Forced back for a while from their front line trenches,

after a prolonged and intense bombardment and by an overwhelming

superiority of numbers, they never even fell back to their support line.

But, turning on the enemy who was advancing along and astride the San

Sisto road, they drove him back and re-established their own front line

within six hours of the first attack. It was here that a boy Colonel, a

Sherwood Forester scarcely twenty-one years old, won the V.C. and fell

severely wounded. When things looked black, he had organised the defence

and the subsequent counter-attack, collecting together British

Infantrymen of several Battalions, together with British Artillerymen

and Italian Machine-Gunners and Engineers, welding them into a coherent

force and making swift, yet well thought out, dispositions which did

much to save the situation.

On the right of the British, the French Infantry, though furiously

assaulted, never, I believe, budged an inch. On the right of the French,

the Italians were momentarily driven from Col Valbella, Col del Rosso

and Col d'Echele, which they had won in January, but retook all three a

few days later.

But we in the Battery knew nothing of all this at the time. We knew only

that we had to open fire on our counter-preparation target. The gunpit

of our No. 1 gun near the cross-roads was in low-lying ground, now so

full of gas that one could hardly see one's hand before one's face.

Fortunately we could achieve the rate of fire required by using three

guns only, so we left No. 1 out of action for the time. The enemy's

bombardment, as far as we were concerned, was beginning to slacken a

little, but was still heavy. The Major, out on the road with a signaller

mending wire, was hit in the face with shrapnel. It turned out, happily,

not a serious wound, but at the time it looked less hopeful. He went

down the mountains in the same Field Ambulance with the young Colonel of

the Sherwood Foresters, of whom I have already spoken.

There was an abandoned Field Ambulance in the road, half in the ditch,

with the engine still running. The driver had found the shelling too hot

to stay. There was no one inside it, but we got a couple of stretchers

from it. And we had need of them. No. 4 gun, my own gun, which was

nearest to the road, suffered most severely. Seven of the detachment on

this gun were hit, not all at once but, what is apt to be much more

demoralising, at intervals of a few minutes. A Bombardier was in charge

of the gun that day, no senior N.C.O.'s being available. He showed a

very wonderful coolness and courage. Shells were bursting all round the

gunpit, and sometimes in the gunpit itself. But the rate of fire never

slackened. Every now and again the cry was heard "another casualty on

No. 4!" and stretcher bearers would start down the road from the Command

Post. But, each time, almost before they had started, came the deep

report of another round fired. No casualties and no shelling could

silence her. At one time this Bombardier had only two other men to help

him work the gun. And both of them were as undismayed as he. He won the

Military Medal for his gallantry that day, and I was very proud of him

and of No. 4.

The Brigade Chaplain appeared in the course of the morning and gave a

hand in carrying the wounded away on stretchers. It was outside his

official work and I give him all credit and respect for the help he gave

us. But one N.C.O. in the Battery, with the plain speaking that comes

naturally in the face of common danger, said to him, "Well, Sir, we

never thought much of you before, either as a man or as a preacher, but

we're glad to see you here to-day doing your bit."

The Austrian gunners had a fine sense of discrimination in their

targets. The wooden hut, in which I and two of my brother officers used

to sleep, had been hit two or three times that day, and much of our kit

had been destroyed. So had both volumes of Morley's _Rousseau_, which

were on a shelf over my bed, leaving behind only a few torn and

scattered pages. Much damage had also been done to a collection of

Pompeian photographs of great historical interest. But Baedeker's

_Northern Italy_, which lay alongside, had not been touched!

* * * * *

The God of Battles also discriminates delicately. He takes the best and

leaves the worst behind. There died that day, struck by a shell at the

foot of our tree O.P. on Cima del Taglio, one of the finest

personalities in the Battery, a signalling Bombardier who had worked for

some years on a railway in America and, just before the war, as a

railway clerk in the Midlands. He was the father of a young family,

thoughtful and capable, and loyal without subservience to those of

higher military rank, in so far as he judged them to be worthy of his

loyalty. I remember one night at the beginning of the year, when we were

keeping watch together among the snows at Col d'Astiago, with the sky

cold and clear and full of stars, and when he and I talked in complete

understanding and agreement of the waste of war and the deeper purposes

of life and the need to build up a better world. Now he is buried in the

beautiful Baerenthal Valley, along which runs the road from Pria dell'

Acqua to San Sisto and Asiago.

As that day ended, which the Italians always afterwards spoke of as "il

giorno quindici" (the fifteenth day), the firing on both sides in our

sector slackened, though our guns were seldom silent for more than an

hour at a time, and the Austrians still carried out sudden bursts of

vicious fire in our neighbourhood. But that night, and the next day and

the next, we began to get through information of what had been happening

all along the line. And when, a week later, the whole tale could be

told, it was evident that no great offensive on any Front during this

war, prepared with so great elaboration and carried out with so great

resources, had ever quite so blankly failed, as the great Austrian

offensive from the Astico to the Sea. And the effect upon the

self-confidence and morale of the Italian Army and of the Allied

contingents was correspondingly great. For, to speak frankly, this

offensive had been awaited with much apprehension and anxiety, with the

memory of Caporetto not yet faded and in view of the success of the

German offensive in France.

CHAPTER XXXIII

IN THE TRENTINO

The Austrian offensive on the mountain sector, from the Astico to Monte

Grappa, had been obviously and decisively broken by the 18th of June.

But there was still danger on the plain, particularly in the Montello

sector, where the Austrians were established in strong force west of the

Piave. A flying Brigade of British Heavy Artillery was hurriedly formed

and sent down the mountains. Of this Brigade my own Battery formed part.

Our general function was to reinforce the Italian Artillery in what was

at the moment the most critical sector of the whole Front, our

particular function to destroy by shell fire the Piave bridges behind

the Austrian troops. But when we arrived we found that the emergency had

already passed. The bridges had already been destroyed by airmen and

Italian Artillery, and the Austrian forces had either been driven back

across or into the river by Italian counter-attacks, or had been cut off

and compelled to surrender. We, therefore, came back to the Plateau

without firing a round.

But we did not remain there long. The idea of a mobile Artillery of

manoeuvre was much talked of at this time, and early in July a Brigade

consisting of three British Siege Batteries, my own included, was moved

westwards up into the Trentino. We travelled all the way by road,

through Verona up to Brescia, "the eagle that looks over Lombardy," and

thence beside Lake Idro, up the Val Chiese, past Storo into the Val

D'Ampola.

All this last stretch of country is famous in Italian history as the

scene of Garibaldi's campaign of 1866, which, had it not been

interrupted by the course of events elsewhere, would probably have

hastened the liberation of Trento by more than half a century, and

greatly modified the problems of Italian policy in recent years. The

story is well known of the recall of Garibaldi, which reached him at the

moment of victory at Bezzecca, and of his famous reply, a model of

laconic self-discipline, in the one word "Ubbidisco"--"I obey." The

little town of Bezzecca lay this July behind the Italian lines, but in

full view and easy range of the Austrians. A company of Arditi was

billeted here, with whom I lunched one day, returning from a front line

reconnaissance. The Piazza had been renamed by the Italians "Piazza

Ubbidisco," and under cover of darkness they set up one night on the

mountain side just above the town a memorial stone to Garibaldi and his

volunteers of 1866, a provocative target for Austrian gunners.

No other British troops, except these three Batteries of ours, ever

fought in the Trentino. It was a proud distinction and a very memorable

experience. The natural scenery was superb, a series of great mountain

ranges, uneven lines of jagged peaks, enclosing deep cut valleys, the

lower slopes of the mountains densely wooded, the higher levels bare

precipitous rock. The Austrian front line ran along one ridge of peaks

and ours along another; between ran a deep valley, all No Man's Land,

into which patrols used to climb down at night, often with the aid of

ropes. One mountain mass, a continuation of Cima d'Oro, was partly in

our possession and partly in theirs, and up there by night among the

rocks patrols grappled for the mastery, poised high above the world, and

in these struggles men sometimes slipped, or were thrown, to crash to

death thousands of feet below in the Val di Ledro.

This country was Austrian before the war, though inhabited wholly by

Italians, and Italian troops had conquered it with extraordinary feats

of endurance and daring in their first great onrush all along their old

frontiers in the spring of 1915. But now a big advance here by either

side, in the face of carefully prepared opposition, seemed almost

inconceivable, except as the result of some wide turning movement,

hinging on some point many miles away.

The special military problems presented by warfare in such country were

numerous and difficult. Our guns had to be dragged into position up a

rough mountain track, which at some points was too narrow and at others

too weak to allow the passage of a six-inch howitzer without much

preliminary blasting and building up. Our first gun to go up took

twenty-four hours of continuous labour between the time of starting up

the track and the time of arriving in position, a distance of only about

two miles of zig-zag. No tractor or other power engine could be used

here. The only force available was that of men hauling on drag ropes,

and a party of sixty Italian gunners reinforced our men.

What may be called the problems of pure gunnery were still more

difficult. British Heavy guns had never fired under such conditions

before and, for the benefit of such of my readers as may be practical

Artillerymen, it may be interesting to remark that for one of our

targets the angle of sight, properly so called, worked out at more than

twenty degrees, while the map-range elevation was only about fifteen.

The devising of an accurate formula for correction of elevation for a

large "_dislivello_," as the Italians shortly call it, which in English

means a large "difference of level" between a gun and its target, is one

of the most intricate problems of theoretical gunnery, or, for that

matter, of theoretical mechanics, involving, among other factors, the

various shapes and sizes of projectiles, their comparative steadiness

during flight, the resistance of the air, and the effect of other

atmospheric conditions and of the force of gravity.

There was a splendid opportunity for systematically testing various

rival formulae in the Trentino, but it was allowed to slip. Among

gunners, as among other classes, and especially among Regular Army

gunners, the so-called practical man sees little value in scientific

experiments, which do not produce large, obvious and quick returns. We

fired many hundred rounds in the Trentino and I have no doubt that they

were tolerably effective. But most of them were fired at night, with no

observation possible, and we were often restricted in our registrations

by daylight to four rounds a section per target, from which no really

reliable conclusions could be drawn.[1]

[Footnote 1: We could get no help from Italian range tables, which were

not merely for different guns and ammunition, but were drawn up on

different principles from our own.]

* * * * *

We were billeted in the village of Tiarno di Sotto, where the Mayor

under the Austrian regime, an Italian by race, was still carrying on his

duties. "But I shall have to disappear, if the Austrians ever come

back," he said with a smile. It was a tremendous climb from our billets

to get anywhere, the least tremendous being to our Battery position,

straight up the nearest mountain side. A very active and energetic man

could get up in a quarter of an hour. It used to take me twenty minutes.

The weather, moreover, was hot, though considerably cooler than on the

plains.

Some Czecho-Slovaks were billeted in the next house to ours, but, owing

to lack of a common language, we were unfortunately unable to talk to

them. They were well-built fellows, and gave one an impression of great

tenacity and intelligence. And I know that they were fine fighters. But

they had not the gaiety of the Italians, partly perhaps because they

were exiles in a strange land, and must so remain till the day of final

victory, which might then have seemed still infinitely remote. An

amusing incident happened one evening. Four officers had deserted from

the Austrian lines and surrendered to the Czecho-Slovaks; it was one of

their military functions to induce surrenders. Two of these officers

were themselves Czecho-Slovaks, the third a Jugo-Slav and the fourth an

Italian from Istria. They were very hungry and were in the midst of a

good meal, in the presence of a Czecho-Slovak guard, when a Corporal and

two gunners from our Battery, passing outside the house and hearing some

language being spoken within, which they recognised to be neither

English not Italian, rightly thought it their duty to enter and

investigate the matter. The deserters were astonished to see these

unfamiliar looking persons, speaking a strange tongue and wearing a

uniform which they had never seen before. But they were still more

astonished to learn that they were British. They seemed hardly to be

aware that the British were at war with Austria, much less that any

British troops had been within hundreds of miles of them. The incident

closed in much mirth and friendliness.

In the village were also billeted many Italian troops, who used to fill

the night with song, long after most of us had gone to bed:--

"'Addio, mia bell', addio!'

Cantava nel partir la gioventù,"

which is never very far from the lips of any Italian soldier, and those

endless _stornelli_, which to an invariable tune they multiply from day

to day.

"II General Cadorna

Mangiava la bifstecca;

Ai poveri soldati

Si dava castagna secca,"[1]

[Footnote 1: "General Cadorna used to eat beefsteak. To the poor

soldiers they gave dried chestnuts."]

or

"Il Re dal fronte Giulio

Ha scritto alla Regina,

'Arrivato a Trieste

Ti manderò una cartolina,'"[1]

[Footnote 1: "The King has written to the Queen from the Julian Front

'when I get to Trieste, I will send you a picture post card.'"]

with its sardonic variant or sequel,

"Il General Cadorna

Ha scritto alla Regina

'Se vuoi veder Trieste,

Compra una cartolina.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: "General Cadorna has written to the Queen, 'if you want to

see Trieste, buy a picture post card.'"]

Many of the others are for various reasons unprintable, though many are

extremely witty and amusing. Even those which I have quoted were

nominally forbidden by the High Command to be sung, but the prohibition

was not very rigorously enforced. And General Cadorna, after all, had

now passed into history. Of his successor I never heard any evil sung,

though I remember once hearing a great crowd of soldiers and civilians

at Genoa shouting monotonously.

"Viva, viva il Generale Dia!"

The refrain of the _stornelli_ was onomatopoeic, and was intended to

represent the sound of gunfire.

"Bim Bim Bom,

Bim Bim Bom,

Al rombo del cannon."

* * * * *

What a theatrical country Italy is! I remember being out in the streets

of Tiarno one evening with a stream of song issuing from almost every

house, and looking up at the full moon riding high over the towering

peaks that locked in our valley and all but shut out the night sky. I

could hardly believe that it was neither a stage setting nor a dream.

I remember another day, when I did a great climb above Bezzecca to carry

out a front line reconnaissance, and arrived limp and perspiring to

lunch at the Headquarters of an Italian Artillery Group, high, high up,

looking out upon a glorious and astounding view. And in the afternoon I

took my first ride on a _teleferica,_ or aerial railway, slung along a

steel rope across the deeps, seated on a sort of large wooden tea tray,

some six feet long and two and a half across, with a metal rim some six

inches high running round the edge. I was quite prepared to be sick or

at least giddy. But I was pleasantly disappointed. My journey took about

a quarter of an hour; walking it would have taken about three hours of

very stiff climbing. The motion is quite steady, except for a slight

jolt as one passes each standard, and, provided one sits still and

doesn't shift one's centre of gravity from side to side, there is no

wobbling of the tea tray. And looking down from time to time I saw tree

tops far below me, and men and mules on mountain tracks as black specks

walking.

* * * * *

There were various theories to account for our being sent to the

Trentino. One was that an Austrian attack was feared there, another that

an Italian attack was intended, but that the intention was afterwards

abandoned, a third that the whole thing was a feint to puzzle the

Austrians. But in any case we did not remain there long. By the

beginning of August we were back on the Plateau. On the return journey,

which was again by road all the way, we were given three days' rest at

Desenzano and I was able to spend half a day in Verona.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SIRMIONE AND SOLFERINO

"Leave is a privilege and not a right," according to a hack quotation

from the King's Regulations. This quotation has done good service in the

mouth of more than one Under Secretary of State for War, heading off

tiresome questioners in the British House of Commons. Leave was a very

rare privilege for the British Forces in Italy. In France, taking a

rough average of all ranks and periods, British troops got leave once a

year. In my Battery in Italy, the majority were without leave home for

nineteen months. How much longer they would have had to wait, if the war

had not conveniently come to an end in the nineteenth month of their

Italian service, I do not know. Even in Italy, of course, the privilege

was extended somewhat more freely to junior regimental officers and much

more freely to Staff officers and Lieutenant-Colonels, in view of the

danger of brain fag and nervous strain following upon their greater

mental exertions and their abnormal exposure to shell fire and the

weather. The former class went home about every eleventh, the latter

about every third month.

The French Parliament fairly early in the war, with that gross lack of

discrimination and of military understanding habitual to politicians,

insisted on the granting of leave every three months to all ranks in all

theatres of war. The Italian Parliament pedantically laid down a uniform

period of six months. The British Parliament, with the sure political

instinct of our race, preferred to leave the whole matter in the hands

of the War Office. The interference in purely military affairs of

unpractical sentimentalists was strongly discouraged at Westminster.

Why no leave to England could be granted except in special cases, was

cogently explained from time to time during the summer in circulars

written by Staff officers of high rank, who had frequent opportunities

of informing themselves of the realities of the situation, while

visiting London. These circulars were read out on parade and treated

with the respect which they deserved. To allay possible, though quite

unreasonable, unrest, it was determined to open a British Club, or Rest

Camp, at Sirmione, which, as every reader of Tennyson knows, stands on

the tip of a long promontory at the southern end of Lake Garda. Here a

week's holiday was granted to a large proportion of the officers and a

small proportion of the rank and file. Many officers went there more

than once. Two large hotels were hired, which had been chiefly

frequented before the war by corpulent and diseased Teutons, for whom a

special course of medical treatment, including sulphur baths, used to be

prescribed.

One of these hotels was now set apart for British officers, the other

for men. A funny little person in red tabs was put in charge; there were

various speculations as to his past activities, but all agreed that he

had got into a good job now, and wasn't going to lose it, if tact could

prevent it. This little man used to stand outside the hotel gates as

each week's guests arrived from the steamer, and always had a cheery

smile of welcome for every Field officer; to General officers he showed

special attentions. He took his meals in the same room as the rest of

us, but at what was known as "the Staff table," where he invited to join

him any officers of high rank, who might be staying at the hotel, or, if

there were none such available, certain of his private friends. The food

supplied to ordinary people like myself was good, wholesome, reasonably

plentiful and cheap. At "the Staff table" special delicacies were

provided and additional courses, with no increase of charge. The

profits, he used to say, were made entirely on the drinks and smokes.

A series of rules was drawn up, that none of us might be led into any

avoidable temptation. All towns within reach,--Milan, Verona, Mantua,

Brescia, Peschiera,--were placed out of bounds. So, too, were some of

the larger villages on the shores of the Lake. The hours during which

alcoholic liquor might be obtained, either in the Hotels or in the Cafes

of Sirmione, were narrowly limited. Beer was strictly rationed.

Carefully regulated excursions on the Lake, by steamer or launch, were

permitted and even encouraged. Likewise bathing.

I spent a week here, from August 14th to 21st, in gloriously fine, hot

weather. Some said that the damp heat was relaxing and depressing, but

I, in my second Italian summer, was getting acclimatised. The place was

wonderfully beautiful. The end of the promontory is covered with olive

trees, the ground thickly carpeted with wild mint and thyme, surrounded

on three sides by the deep blue water of the Lake, along the shores of

which lie little white villages, backed by groups of straight, dark

cypresses, with mountain ranges rising in the background, range behind

range, and overhead the hot Italian sun, shining from a cloudless sky.

Here, at the point, were the ruins of what are called, upon what

evidence I know not, the Villa, the Baths and the Grotto of Catullus.

Here, too, was an Italian Anti-Aircraft Battery, and the Grotto of

Catullus was filled with their ammunition.

The Austrians still held the upper end of the Lake, including the town

of Riva. But only Italian motor boats now survived on the Lake,

occasionally raiding Riva. The Austrian boats had all been sunk early in

the war.

* * * * *

On the 15th I went round the lower end of the Lake in a steamer and,

passing along the shores of the beautiful Isola di Garda, on which

stands the less beautiful Villa Borghese, landed at Maderno, famous for

its lemon groves. Here a church was being used as a ration store. It had

fine carving on the door. The French had established Artillery and

Machine Gun Schools close to the Lake and several of their officers were

on the steamer.

On the 16th I went with a young officer from a Yorkshire Battalion, a

most agreeable companion, to Desenzano, which was out of bounds. We

played billiards and lunched, and in the afternoon went to sleep on the

grass in the shade beside the Lake. We were driven back in a carrozza

along the promontory by an old Garibaldino, a Capuan by birth, who in

1860 at the age of eleven joined Garibaldi, when he crossed from Sicily

to the mainland, and held older people's horses at the Battle of the

Volturno. He served with the Fifth Garibaldini in the Trentino campaign

of 1866 and knew intimately the country where I had lately been, the Val

d'Ampola and Storo, Tiarno and Bezzecca. He then joined the Italian

Regular Army, and in 1870 was a Corporal in the Pavia Brigade. He was

present at the taking of Rome and claimed that, although an Infantryman,

he helped to load one of the guns which breached the Porta Pia. If this

claim be true, there must have been either a lack of gunners on this

famous occasion, or a certain degree of enthusiastic confusion. Having

entered Rome, he got very drunk and absented himself from his Regiment

without leave for three days. As a punishment he was made to march on

foot, carrying a full pack, from Rome to Padua. He showed us his old

military pay-book, his medals and other souvenirs. Next year he will be

seventy years old and will begin to draw a pension. Having returned to

Sirmione, we arranged with him to drive us next day to the neighbouring

battlefields of 1859, San Martino and Solferino. Much delighted, he

assured me, quite without necessity, that next day he would put on his

best clothes, would wash and shave, and give his horse an extra bit of

grooming.

Accordingly next morning at ten o'clock we started off again in the

carrozza. We visited first San Martino della Battaglia, only a few miles

from the southern end of the Lake. This was the northern extremity of

the battlefield of Solferino. It was here that the Sardinians and

Piedmontese, forming the left wing of the Franco-Italian Army, attacked

and drove back the Austrian right wing. A memorial tower has been

erected here, 250 feet high, with great avenues of cypresses radiating

outwards from it. The custodian is a handsome boy, who lost a leg at the

taking of Gorizia two years ago. There is no stair-case within the

tower; one goes up by a spiral inclined plane. At successive stages, as

one ascends, are large and detailed paintings, running right round the

inner circumference of the tower, representing the battles of the

Italian Wars of Liberation from 1848 to 1870. As works of art they are

not of the first class, but they convey here and there a vivid sense of

life and movement, an advance of the Bersaglieri with their cocks'

feathers waving in the wind, Garibaldini in their red shirts rushing

Bomba's gunners on the Volturno, Italian cavalry charging a Battalion of

brown-coated Croats at Custozza, the defence of a fort in the Venetian

lagoons against Austrian warships.

On a fine day the view from the top is very good, but that day it was

hazy in the great heat. Close by is an Ossario, containing the skulls

and bones of seven thousand dead collected in the neighbourhood, washed

clean with white wine and set out in neat rows, the majority Italian. A

good warning, one would think, against war, and more compact and less

wasteful of space than a conventional graveyard.

Thence we drove on to Solferino, a little remote village with a single

street paved with cobble stones, seldom visited by foreign tourists. The

plaster on the walls of the farmhouses hereabouts still bears many

bullet marks. As we drove, the Garibaldino pointed out to us some of the

positions where Napoleon III.'s Generals had sited their Batteries. We

were the first British officers seen here during the war, and had an

enthusiastic reception. I was surprised to find that none of our

Regulars had come over from Sirmione, as a matter of professional

interest and duty, to study the tactics of 1859 upon the ground.

We lunched well at a small _albergo_. There were four good-looking

daughters of the house, who came and sat with us in turn and watched us

eat. They had the naturalness and simple charm of dwellers in remote

places. "Four good cows," said the Garibaldino, with the frank realism

of the South, "but all the local proprietors are too old." After lunch

my companion remained in the village, and I climbed the ridge from which

the French drove the Austrians, a very strong natural position even now.

I went up La Rocca, at its south-eastern extremity, on which stands an

old square tower, also converted into a battle memorial. Here again

there are no steps within, but an ascending spiral plane. The slopes at

this end of the ridge are thickly planted with young cypresses, and the

place will grow in beauty year by year. Even now it is well wooded, with

larger trees just below the tower. The village lies at the foot of the

slope. Just outside it, off the road on slightly rising ground at the

end of an avenue, is another and larger Ossario, containing twenty

thousand skulls and sets of bones, French and Austrian. The building is

full of banners and wreaths and memorial tablets, including one lately

sent by the French troops now fighting on the Italian Front.

"Ceux de la grande guerre

A ses glorieux anciens.

1859-1918."

A few skeletons have been preserved intact, including one said to have

been an Austrian bandmaster, a giant eight feet tall. The nationality of

some of the skulls can be determined by bullets, French or Austrian,

found in the head and now attached by a string.

I stepped forth from this well-ordered tomb into the outer sunshine with

a sense of personal oppression and of human ineffectiveness. How slowly

and how clumsily do the feet of History slouch along! And yet, if

Napoleon III. had kept faith with Cavour, the fighting here might have

liberated Venetia without the necessity for another war a few years

later. How quiet and silent lie these battlefields of yesterday! Even

so, one day, will lie the pine woods round Asiago, shell-torn and

tormented now, and populous with the soldiers of many nations, yet of a

wondrous beauty in the full moonlight and the fresh night air. I shall

be back up there in three days' time!

* * * * *

We drove back in the warm evening, by the road through Pozzolengo toward

Peschiera, along which many of the defeated Austrians fled in 1859. The

roadside was dusty, but along all the hedges the acacias still showed a

most delicate and tender green.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE ASIAGO PLATEAU ONCE MORE

During August and September we were kept pretty busy on the Plateau.

Concentrations on enemy trenches and wire and special counter-battery

shoots by day and counter-battery support of Infantry raids by night

were continually required of us. We fired high explosive by day and

chiefly gas shell at night. Our own Infantry and the French on our right

raided the enemy's front and support lines very frequently, bringing

back many prisoners. The French constantly penetrated and reconnoitred

the enemy's defensive system on Mount Sisemol. Many of us were inclined

to think that the casualties, sometimes heavy, which were incurred in

these raids, and the great quantity of ammunition shot away, were

largely wasted. We saw no sufficient return for them, beyond a certain

amount of information obtained from prisoners, much of which was of

small and doubtful value. But in view of what happened later, I think it

must be agreed that these continual raids and bombardments did their

share in gradually wearing down the morale and power of resistance of

the Austrian Army.

There was a persistent rumour that the enemy was on the point of

retiring to a line, on which he was known to be working hard, along the

lower slopes of Monte Interrotto and Monte Catz on the far side of the

Plateau. This line, we learned from prisoners, was commonly referred to

as the _Winterstellung_ (winter position). It would have been stronger,

defensively, than his existing line, and would have had the great

advantage of being able largely to be supplied and munitioned during

daylight, as there was much good cover and roads hidden in the pine

woods leading down immediately behind it. It would have involved the

moral disadvantage of evacuating the ruins of Asiago. But, with the snow

down on the Plateau, every Austrian track and foot-mark would have been

visible from our O.P.'s, and the Austrian situation, bad as it already

was from this point of view, would have become quite intolerable. If, on

the other hand, we had followed up an Austrian retreat to their

_Winterstellung_ by the occupation of Asiago and the throwing forward of

our line across the Plateau, the relative situation would have been

reversed. Our Infantry and many of our Batteries would then be out in

the open, in view from the Austrian O.P.'s, unable to light a fire by

day, and only able to send up supplies by night; and our general

situation would be so much the worse with heavy snow increasing our

discomfort and the visibility of any work we might undertake and of our

every movement.

For this reason, as has been explained in an earlier chapter, it was

taken for granted that a small advance from our present excellent line

would be worse than useless, and that only an advance at least to the

crest of the first mountain range beyond the Plateau would be of any

military value. The possibility of such an advance being attempted was

evidently still in the minds of the Staff, for our forward or Battle

Position at San Sisto had to be kept in constant readiness for

occupation, and it was suggested by some that the occasion for a big

attack would be the moment when the enemy was in the act of retiring

voluntarily to his _Winterstellung_, necessarily a somewhat difficult

and risky operation.

Meanwhile the enemy guns were not silent. They were indeed unpleasantly

active, constantly sweeping the road just behind our Battery, putting

down violent, though brief, concentrations on the cross roads at Pria

dell' Acqua, less than a hundred yards to our right, and apparently also

endeavouring to carry out occasional counter-battery shoots after our

own pattern. The British Batteries in this sector suffered a number of

casualties during this period, and one in particular, not my own, was

frequently shelled with great precision by twelve-inch howitzers, most

disagreeable weapons, firing at extreme ranges from the cover of some

distant valley. Many efforts were made to locate these particular guns,

but I am not confident that any of them were successful. Among the

victims in this Battery was Preece, a young officer who had served under

me in a Training Battery in England. He was the only son of a widowed

mother, and, had he lived, might have become a world-famous chemist. His

grave, too, is in the Baerenthal Valley.

Our own officers' Mess had several narrow escapes, especially on one

occasion when the impact of an enemy shell was broken by a trench cart

and a box of tools, only seven or eight yards away. None of the tools

were ever found again and portions of the trench cart were seen next

morning hanging on the telephone wires beside the road. Only a few

splinters came into the Mess and did no harm, all the occupants, myself

included, warned by the sound of the approaching shell, having flung

ourselves face downwards on the floor. Another frequent exercise of the

enemy at this time was night bombing, which during the full moon became

somewhat serious. But a big raid by our own airmen on the enemy

aerodrome at Borgo in the Val Sugana put an end to this source of

trouble.

I was able now and then to make short expeditions down the mountains in

the Battery car to Thiene, and sometimes even to Vicenza, for the

ostensible purpose of buying canteen and mess stores and drawing the

Battery pay. Thiene is the ugliest and dullest little town in Italy. But

Vicenza, with its exquisite Olympian theatre, and other fine Palladian

architecture, varied by many smaller buildings which are beautiful

examples of the Venetian Gothic style, with its busy and animated

Piazza, centring round the ever-crowded Café Garibaldi, and with the

wooded slope of the famous Monte Berico, rich with historic memorials,

rising behind the town, never failed to lift my mind out of the dreary

monotony of war into an atmosphere of cleaner and more enduring things.

I remember, too, the strange thrill I had one day, when, having passed

the sawmills and dumps of stores and shells and the huddle of

Headquarter offices at Granezza, I came out on the last edge of the

mountain wall, into sudden full view of the great plain below, full of

rivers and cities, and saw, for the first time from up here, the

sunlight flashing on a strip of distant golden sea. It was the lagoons

round Venice.

I spent also many interesting days about this time at our tree O.P. on

Cima del Taglio. The Italians had an O.P. in a neighbouring tree, which

they called Osservatorio Battisti. The British Field Artillery occupied

a third tree, and the French a fourth. The pine trees on that summit

were, literally, full of eyes. But the enemy never discovered any of us,

though he sometimes dropped a few stray shells in our neighbourhood. Our

own O.P. was not generally manned at night, unless some prearranged

operation was taking place, but the officer on duty had to remain within

call and slept in a log hut near the foot of the tree, in telephonic

communication with Battery and Brigade. The French and Italians also had

huts close by, and I spent several evenings playing chess with them, or

talking, or listening to the mandolin and the singing of Italian

_stornelli_. One young Italian, in particular, I remember with some

affection, a certain Lieutenant Prato, a mandolin player of great skill

and a very charming personality.

One day in September, when the news from the French Front was getting

better and better, I remember talking, on our tree top, to the Italian

officer, who was at that time acting as _liaison_ officer to our

Brigade, a member of a family well known in Milan. He knew every inch of

those mountains, now in Austrian hands, along the old Italian frontier.

His Battery had fought there in the early part of the war. He knew, too,

Gorizia and the Carso battlefields. And he was sick at heart, as every

Italian always silently was, at the memory of the retreat of last

autumn. And I remember saying that what was now happening in the Somme

country would happen soon in Italy. There, I reminded him, was a

stretch of country which we had once conquered, inch by inch, with

terrible losses and infinite heroism and insufficient Artillery, just as

Italy had conquered those positions on the Carso and on Monte Santo. And

all those gains of ours had been wiped out in a few disastrous hours

last March, as Italy's had been wiped out last October, and now we were

advancing again over that same country and beyond it, far more rapidly

and with far smaller losses than in those bloody days two years ago. And

so, I prophesied to him, would it be on this Front too. The day was

coming when Italy would win back all she had lost, and far more than she

had ever won before, far more swiftly and cheaply than in her early

brave offensives, and Austria, like Germany, would be broken in

hopeless, irretrievable defeat. He said to me then that he hoped it

might come true, but that he was less certain of the future than I. But,

two months later, when I had proved to be a true prophet, he reminded me

of that conversation of ours.

PART VI

THE LAST PHASE

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE MOVE TO THE PIAVE

The second week in October we moved down from the Plateau and lay for a

week at Mestre, within sight of Venice. One clear afternoon it looked as

though one could throw a stone across the intervening water. Every one

took for granted that a big Italian offensive was imminent. The rumour

was that it would be timed to begin, as near as possible, on the

anniversary of the defeat of Caporetto. In Italy more weight is attached

to anniversaries than with us. One felt expectation everywhere in the

air.

* * * * *

It was during these days that I fell in with the Rumanian Legion. I had

been in Padua and saw a group of them standing on the platform at the

railway station. They were obviously not Italians. Their uniform was

similar to that of the Italian Infantry, but their collars were red,

yellow and blue, and they wore a cockade of the same three colours on

their hats. They wore Sam Browne belts, too, and carried a _pugnale_

like the Italian Arditi. I asked a Carabiniere on duty who they were.

He smiled but did not know. "Perhaps Yugo-Slavs," he suggested. One of

them overheard our conversation and came up to me saying, "Siamo Rumeni,

Legione Rumena." Then followed a tremendous fraternisation. We shook

hands all round and began to talk. We talked Italian, which, being very

like their own language, they all understood. Indeed, for an Italian

Rumanian is much easier to understand than many of the Italian local

dialects.

They were attractive people, of all ages and very friendly, rather like

Italians, but with a queer indescribable racial difference. They were

natives, mostly, of Transylvania and had much to say of the oppression

of their nationality by the Magyars. Most of them had been conscribed to

fight in the Austro-Hungarian Army, but had crossed over to the Italian

lines at the first opportunity. One said, "There are four millions of us

in Austria and Hungary." Then, with an air of restrained fury, "Is that

not enough?" Another said, "But after the war there will be a Great

Rumania--great and beautiful." And another said, "We Rumanians must be

very grateful to Guglielmone.[1] If he had not made this war, we should

not have seen the Greater Rumania in our lifetime. But now, if it was

not certain before, the blunders of Carluccio[2] have put it beyond all

doubt." And another told me that his father wrote and spoke English very

well, having lived for twelve years in America at St Louis. And another

explained to me how the Rumanians had retained, more than any other

modern nation, the speech and customs and dress and traditions of the

ancient Romans, which things they had originally derived from the

legionaries of the Emperor Trajan.[3] When we parted I said, "May we all

meet again on the field of victory beyond the Piave. Long live the

Greater Rumania!" And they all cried, "Long live England! Long live

victory!" And so I was going away, when one of them, a little fellow,

with a rather sad, earnest face, who had apparently missed a parting

handshake, ran after me about twenty yards, and seized me by the hand

and cried again, "Long live victory!"

[Footnote 1: "Big William."]

[Footnote 2: "Wretched little Charles."]

[Footnote 3: This common boast of the Rumanians is quite true. It is

partly to be accounted for by the fact that they were able to retreat

before successive invading hordes of barbarians into the inaccessible

valleys of the Carpathians, and come down again on to the plains when

the danger had passed by.]

* * * * *

From Mestre we moved up through Treviso to a Battery position, on which

an advance party had been at work for several days. It grew more and

more certain that the offensive was coming at last. Troops of all arms

were moving forward in unending streams along every road leading toward

the Piave. Prominent among them were many Italian Engineers and bridging

detachments with great numbers of pontoons. Beyond Treviso all troop

movements took place at night, and our defensive (and offensive)

measures against aircraft were apparently sufficient to prevent the

enemy from getting any clear idea of what was going on. It seems that he

expected an attack in the mountains, but not on the plain. The Italian

High Command, on the other hand, considered that the relative strength

and morale of the opposing Armies was now such that we could attack on

the plain without fear of a successful counter-attack in the mountains,

and that, the attack on the plain once well under way, we could pass to

the offensive in the mountains also. This view of things was justified

by the events which followed. Two British Divisions were moved down to

the plain, and one was left in the mountains. The Heavy Artillery was

divided proportionately and, of my own Brigade, one Battery was left in

the mountains but the rest moved down.

Our new Battery position lay between the ruined village of Lovadina and

the river Piave, about three-quarters of a mile from the nearer bank.

There was a farmhouse, not much knocked about, close to the gun pits

and, with the aid of a few tents erected out of sight along a shallow

ditch, the whole Battery was very tolerably billeted. Another British

Battery was less than a hundred yards in rear of us, and two others not

far away on our right flank. We were once more in a land of acacia

hedges, beginning now to take on their autumn tints. For miles round us

the country was dead flat. Beyond the river we could see, on a little

rise, what was left of Susegana Castle, near to Conegliano, and on a

higher, longer ridge further away the white _campanile_ of San Daniele

del Friuli, above Udine. It was there that, almost a year ago, in the

first newspaper I saw after the retreat, I had read that Italian

rearguards were still fighting. In the far distance rose great mountain

masses. Up there were Feltre and Belluno, and behind, just visible when

the light was very bright, the peaks of Carnia and the Cadore.

It was an unaccustomed feeling, after months of comparative immunity

from observation behind mountain ridges, to be in flat country again. At

first we all felt a queer sense of insecurity whenever we walked about,

even when thick hedges manifestly screened us from enemy eyes. But the

road from Lovadina to the river bank at Palazzon, which ran right

through our position and within a few yards of our billet, was in full

view, and no movement along it was permitted during daylight. When we

first arrived we found a deep sense of gloom prevailing amongst our

advanced party. They were convinced that our position had been spotted

already, for the Austrians that morning had put down a five minutes'

concentration all round the place. Nothing much heavier than Field Guns

had been firing, but it had been lively while it lasted. It seemed

probable, however, on further inquiry, that this outburst had been

caused by the fact that an idiotic officer belonging to the Battery

immediately in rear of us had marched a working party up the road in

fours, then halted them and allowed the men to stand about in groups on

the road for several minutes. It was at these groups that the Austrians

had apparently been firing. A vigorous protest extracted from our

neighbours a promise that more common sense should be used in future.

We were to remain a silent Battery until the start of the offensive, and

this was to be dependent on the height of the river, which at that time

was in full flood owing to heavy rains in the mountains. Our guns were

well camouflaged and the chances of our detection seemed small. But one

day we had a lucky escape. It was very clear and there had been great

activity in the air on both sides all the morning. All seemed quiet

again, however, and we had the camouflage off one of our guns, and two

small parties working in the open on shelter trenches behind. A plane

was seen approaching, but the air sentry, whose duty it was to keep a

sharp look out through glasses and signal the approach of enemy aircraft

by two blasts of a whistle, gave no warning. He had been deceived by the

marking on the plane, a very thin black cross instead of the thick one

usually found on enemy aircraft. Not till it was right upon us did he

blow the whistle, and then it was too late. The plane flew very low over

us. We could see the pilot looking calmly down at our uncovered gun, and

our men trying, ineffectually and belatedly, to take cover. He certainly

took it all in and marked us down on his map. The position was 'very

easy to identify owing to the solitary farmhouse and the road close by.

A few rifle shots were fired, but they did him no harm, and he sailed

away toward the river and his own lines.

We had certainly been spotted. And then we suddenly saw another plane,

this time an Italian, coming from the left, flying high, hard in

pursuit. The Austrian began to rise, but the Italian outpaced him and

got right above him, and pressed him gradually down towards the ground.

We heard the wooden-sounding _clack-clack-clack_ of machine gun fire.

And then we saw the Austrian evidently go out of control, diving toward

the ground, more and more rapidly, and the Italian circling downwards

above him; and then the Austrian went out of sight behind the acacias

and a few moments later a column of smoke began to rise. He had crashed

in flames, just this side of the river, and his valuable information

with him. The Italian flew back over us, triumphantly and very low this

time, and waved his hand to us. And we gave him a grateful cheer.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST BATTLE

By the night of October 24th the river had fallen a few inches, and

British Infantry crossed in small boats to the Grave di Papadopoli, a

long island of sand in the middle of the stream. On the right a

Battalion of the Gordons crossed, rowed over by Venetian boatmen. I met

one of their officers afterwards. "Everyone of those boatmen deserved a

decoration," he said. "They were all as cool under heavy shell fire as

if they had been rowing on the Grand Canal." Our Infantry held their

preliminary positions here for two days, in spite of considerable

Austrian bombardment and counter-attacks. British aeroplanes flew over

the island and dropped rations in sandbags. Throughout the fighting of

these two days, we were standing by ready to open fire, if orders should

come. But no orders came and we remained a silent Battery.

But on the night of October 26th, half an hour before midnight, the big

bombardment opened and our guns spoke again. It was to be their last

great oration. It was, of its kind, a fine, thunderous performance, and

the Austrian reply, in our own neighbourhood, was feeble. Evidently they

had not spotted our position, thanks to that Italian airman. Our targets

were enemy Batteries and Brigade Headquarters. We fired gas shells

continuously for many hours, switching from one target to another, until

a strong wind got up, rendering gas shelling comparatively ineffective.

Then we got orders to change to high explosive. The gun detachments

worked splendidly, as always. We were below strength and could not

furnish complete reliefs, but no one spared himself or grumbled.

On the morning of the 27th, just before 7 o'clock, our Infantry

attacked, crossing from the island to the further bank of the river.

There were no bridges, and the water was breast high in some places. In

places it came right over the heads of the smaller men, but their taller

comrades pulled them through. Where the current was strongest, cables

were thrown across and firmly secured, and to these men held on, as they

forced their passage through the water.

About ten o'clock I went forward from the Battery position to the river

bank at Palazzon to ascertain the situation. A little man named Sergeant

Barini, half an Italian and half an Englishman, but serving in the

English Army and attached to our Battery, accompanied me. At Palazzon

the river was broad and, under fire, unbridgeable, and we went half a

mile down stream along what up to this morning had been our front line

trench, to the bridgehead at Lido Island. The islands in mid stream were

crowded with prisoners and wounded coming back and fresh troops going

forward, and dead bodies lay about, British and Austrian together, of

men who had fought their last fight, and two crashed aeroplanes. The

Austrians had put up elaborate barbed-wire defences on the island, but

these had been pretty well broken up by our fire.

Some enemy guns of big calibre were still shelling the crossings and

causing casualties among a Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers,

who were in reserve, waiting on the bank for the order to cross. I tried

to locate as accurately as possible the direction of these guns and

reported them by telephone to our Brigade Headquarters. I saw an

Infantry Brigadier, who said that things were going well, but asked for

some additional Artillery support for his left flank on the other side,

and, if possible, for an enemy Battery, which he thought was near

Susegana Castle, to be knocked out. I looked across the river and saw

the dense white smoke screen which our Field Guns were putting up to

cover the advance.

These Italian rivers of the Venetian Plain, fed by the melting Alpine

snows, are not at all like the Thames. Where I was, there were about

nine successive channels, varying in breadth and depth, and in between,

stones and sand and rough vegetation on islands varying in size and

shape and number with the height of the river. And it was no uncommon

thing for the river to rise or fall several feet in a night, for whole

islands to be submerged, or for whole channels to run dry. The

difficulty here of carrying out military operations according to a time

table arranged several days in advance was very great.

Over the main channels pontoons had been thrown, over others light plank

bridges, less strongly supported, through others everybody was wading.

Large bodies of Engineers, mostly Italian, were ceaselessly working at

these river crossings, and working magnificently. For not only was it

necessary to be constantly strengthening and multiplying the bridges

already made, to take the ever-increasing volume of traffic that would

be required to supply the troops across the river, but the enemy's guns

were still firing with terrible accuracy at the crossings, and swarms of

enemy planes were constantly appearing, bombing the bridges and the

islands in a last desperate effort to hold up our advance. Our planes,

too, were never far away, and succeeded in driving off or driving down

many of these attackers. But others got through and were constantly

undoing the work of the Engineers.

When we had got all the information we could, Barini and I went back to

the Battery and reported what we had heard and seen. On the way I let

myself go and spouted much cheap rhetoric, I am afraid, at the little

man. And he laughed rather nervously and thought me, I expect, a queer

companion in rather unpleasant surroundings. For several shells kicked

up great clouds of earth and stones pretty close to us. But he too, I

know, smelt victory in the air that day.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ACROSS THE RIVER

Next day I went over the river and right on, one of the two F.O.O.'s

(forward observation officers) from my Brigade who were to establish and

maintain contact with the advancing Infantry. Three signallers and a

runner came with me, carrying rifles, bayonets and ammunition, a day's

rations and much signalling gear. The other officer had his own party.

We soon subdivided our work and separated.

The twenty-four hours of my duty do not lend themselves to a sustained

description. I passed and identified from the map one of the targets of

my Battery in the preliminary bombardment, an Austrian Battery position,

which we had bombarded for many hours with gas and high explosive

alternately. Our shooting had been accurate and deadly. The position was

a mass of shell holes. One of the guns had been blown up, a second badly

damaged. A third had been pulled out of its pit and half way up a bank

by a team of horses. The enemy had made a desperate effort to get it

away. But horses and men and fragments of men lay dead around it. It was

a well prepared position, and well concealed by trees. But Italian

airmen had spotted it, and marked it down with precision on the map,

marked it down for destruction. The enemy had done much work here. There

were fine, deep dug-outs, well timbered and weatherproof, comfortable

dwelling places in quiet times and strong enough to resist shell

splinters and even direct hits by guns of small calibre. But we had got

a direct hit on one dug-out and killed half a dozen occupants. And the

others had not been proof against our gas. They were full of corpses,

mostly victims of gas. Some were wearing their gas masks, but our gas

had gone through them. Some had apparently been gassed outside, some

with masks on and some without, and had crawled, dying, into the

dug-outs in the vain hope of finding protection there. However hardened

one may grow, by usage, to the common facts of war, few can look on such

a sight as this, without feeling a queer thrill of very mixed emotion.

My men looked with solemn faces at the work they had helped to do. One

said, "poor chaps, _they_ were pretty well done in!" And then we turned

and went on.

* * * * *

It was a very rapidly moving warfare that day. One Infantry Brigade

Headquarters, with whom I kept in intermittent touch, occupied four

successive positions, miles apart, in the course of twelve hours. About

noon I came to a ruined village, Tezze. I went on to reconnoitre it with

one signaller. In a half wrecked house we heard the voices of Italian

peasant women and saw through an open door an ugly, little, dirty child,

probably about a year old, crawling among rubbish and refuse. The

village was only just ours. On the far side of it men of the Manchester

Regiment were lining a ditch, under cover of a hedge, waiting the order

to charge. They warned me to go no further along the road which, they

said, was under enemy machine gun fire. Every few minutes enemy shells

whistled over our heads and burst in the fields and houses behind us. A

wet wind blew down the road. There was no fixed, clearly marked line.

Everything was in movement and rather uncertain....

Enemy guns, captured with their ammunition, swung round and firing at

the enemy, big guns and little guns....

On the British left the Como Brigade were advancing rapidly in spite of

pretty strong opposition. For a while our left flank had been perilously

in the air, but the danger was past now....

All the roads were thick with Austrian equipment thrown away in the

confusion of departure, rifles, steel helmets (grotesquely shaped, like

high-crowned bowler hats), ammunition, coats, packs (handsomely got up,

with furry exteriors), mail bags, maps, office stores, tin despatch

boxes, photographs of blonde girls, bayonets, hand bombs, ... everything

dead thrust into the ditches, both men and horses, the latter smelling

earlier and stronger than the former. (The more I look at dead bodies,

the more childish and improbable does the old idea of personal

immortality appear to me!) ...

At one cross-roads a huge pool of blood, mingling with and overwhelming

the mud. Here a whole transport team of heavy grey horses with wagons

had been hit and blown up. Close by, in a ditch, two British wounded lay

on stretchers, covered with blankets. One, only lightly wounded, gave us

information and directions. The other was very near to death. His face

was growing pale already, as only the faces of the dead are pale. He was

shifting feebly and ineffectually, with the vain instinct to escape

from pain. He was past speech, but he looked at us out of wide open

half-frightened eyes that seemed to question the world despairingly,

like an animal, broken helplessly in a trap....

There were some civilians wandering on the roads, liberated now but

uncertain whither to go or what place was safe, their possessions on

carts. But soon the storm of battle will have passed well beyond them

and they will be able to return to what is left of their homes. One old

woman in black, walking lame, asked me if the Austrians would come back,

and began to cry. I heard some of our soldiers saying in wonder to each

other, "did you see those civies going along the road just now?" Queer,

irrelevant creatures in the battle zone!...

Others, more fixed, liberated in their own villages, were eager to talk

and to welcome us, but a little lost with the British and their

unfamiliar ways and language, full of tales of the lack of food under

the Austrian occupation, and the robbery of all their livestock and

metal and many other things. But the retreat hereabouts had been too

rapid and involuntary for deliberate burning or destruction or

trap-setting on an appreciable scale....

That night I made my headquarters in a wrecked church, from the tower of

which I sent back signals in the morse code by means of a lamp. I slept

for an hour or two under an Austrian blanket, none too clean as it

afterwards appeared, and drank Austrian coffee and ate Austrian

biscuits....

All through that day and night and the day following the cannonading

continued, but with very variable intensity at different points and

times. Sometimes a tremendous affair, heavies, field guns and trench

mortars all pounding away together, creeping barrage, smoke screens and

the rest of it. Elsewhere and at other times, nothing, Infantry well

ahead of the guns, going forward almost into the blue, with nothing

heavier than machine guns to support them.

British Cavalry went through in the dawn, spectral, artistically

perfect, aiming at ambitious, distant objectives, Northamptonshire

Yeomanry who had come from France to Italy a year ago and had been kept

behind the lines all through the war and were having their first show at

last. The next day they suffered many casualties, but they did fine

work. Their reconnaissance officer came into the church soon after

midnight and asked me if the Austrians still held any part of the

village. I told him no, not since yesterday morning.

Later on in the morning great masses of Infantry moved up through the

village; British Infantry with a look of evident satisfaction in their

faces, but unemotional; Italian Infantry, looking usually even less

expressive, but ready to burst into electrical enthusiasm at a touch, at

a word, at a sign.... A British General, all smiles, rode past on his

horse and stopped to ask me a question or two. He tapped me playfully on

the helmet with his riding crop. "When will you get your guns across the

river?" he asked. "As soon, Sir, as the Sappers can build a bridge that

will carry them," I replied....

Now and again Italian planes going on, or coming back from, raids and

reconnaissances, flying very low over our heads, the pilots waving

their hands over the side and cheering, the troops on the roads cheering

back and upwards in return....

When I was relieved, I tramped back to the Piave, many miles now, and

wading those of the channels that were still unbridged returned, tired

and footsore but with a song in my heart, to my Battery.

* * * * *

Not till later did we come to comprehend the vast sweep and the

triumphantly executed plan of this Last Great Battle.[1]

[Footnote 1: For a full and lucid account see the official _Report by

the Comando Supremo on the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, 24th October--2nd

November_ 1918.]

At dawn on the 24th, the same day that the British Divisions had crossed

to the Grave di Papadopoli, the Italian Fourth Army had attacked in the

Grappa sector, where fighting was desperate and progress slow for

several days. On the evening of the 26th the Piave was bridged in three

sectors, and on the 27th three bridgeheads were in being; the first on

the Upper Piave, in the hands of Alpini and French Infantry of the

Italian Twelfth Army; the second on the Middle Piave, in the hands of

Arditi and other troops of the Italian Eighth Army; the third further

downstream, in the hands of our two British Divisions and the Italian

Eleventh Corps. For a while the situation had been critical owing to the

gap between the second and third bridgeheads. But by the 28th fresh

Divisions had crossed the river at all three bridgeheads, and spread out

fanwise, linking up the gaps in the line. The same day on the Asiago

Plateau the enemy at last fell hurriedly back to his _Winterstellung_,

and British troops occupied the ruins of Asiago itself. During the next

two days the advancing troops on the plain swept steadily eastwards. On

the 31st the enemy's line in the Grappa Sector completely collapsed,

with great losses of men and guns. On the 1st of November an attack was

launched along the whole of the Italian Front, from the sea to the

heights of the Stelvio, amid the glaciers and the eternal snows on the

Swiss frontier, and on this day Italian, British and French troops

carried at last, after strong resistance, the whole northern ridge of

the Asiago Plateau, at which we had gazed with eyes of desire for many

long months.

CHAPTER XXXIX

LIBERATORI

On November the 1st a reconnaissance by car was ordered, to test the

practicability and the need of accelerating the forward movement of our

guns. Leary and I and two others started early in a car, adequately

armed and carrying a day's rations and a flask in which rum had been

mixed accidentally with _florio_ (marsala). This most original mixture,

which we christened "florium," was excellent, more thirst-quenching than

rum, more sustaining to the spirit than florio.

That day we travelled 76 miles at the least, in a great curve, through

liberated country. We had everywhere an astounding reception, never to

be forgotten. Everywhere we passed, we were wildly, deliriously,

cheered by the civilian population. Old men ran up to us waving their

hats, old women clapped their hands, young girls waved and threw flowers

at us, little boys ran shouting after us, all crying "Evviva! Evviva!

Liberatori! Viva gl' Inglesi!" The radiant joy of them, and their

smiles, never far from tears, were the manifestation of a form of human

emotion, singularly pure and indescribably moving. Every town and

village was hung with the Italian flag, and at one place an arch of

flowers ran from tree to tree above the road. Everywhere crowds with

smiling, wondering faces, stood watching the Allied troops moving up

along the roads, wave upon wave upon wave, triumphant, unendingly. Here

a few days ago the foreign invader had ruled, perhaps only yesterday,

perhaps only a few hours ago: Now he had vanished, like a bad dream from

which one suddenly awakes, leaving behind him only his dead, and certain

grim marks of his occupation, and vivid memories of many brutal and

cruel and thoughtless acts, to prove that he was worse and more real

than a dream.

* * * * *

We crossed the Piave at Spresiano, on a series of wooden bridges and

pontoons, similar to those further down the stream at Palazzon and Lido

Island. On the further bank we came first to Conegliano. Here just a

year ago some of von Below's German troops, who broke the line at

Caporetto, had been billeted, and later a Bulgarian Governor and staff

had been installed, for the encouragement and flattery of the wavering

minor allies of the enemy powers. On the same principle a Turkish

Governor had been appointed at Feltre. The troops of occupation had been

guilty of wicked excesses at Conegliano. The little town had been

ruthlessly ravaged and set on fire and the majority of the houses had

been completely burnt out, only the charred shells of them remaining.

Hence we turned northwards up into the Alpine foothills, through country

of exceptional beauty, and along the shores of a piece of long blue

water, to the village of Revine Lago. Here were many captured and

abandoned Austrian guns. Some, in the last desperate moments of

departure, had been thrown down a steep cliff which overhangs the lake,

and lay below us, for the time being out of reach. Here I met again

several officers of the Italian Field Artillery, whom I met above Val

Brenta in January, including the Neapolitan Adjutant of Colonel Bucci.

Also General Clerici of the Bersaglieri, who for the moment had his

Headquarters here, a friend of one of my companions. They all

substantiated the rumour that last night, or the night before, Austrian

envoys had appeared with a white flag in the Val Lagarina and had been

taken to Diaz's Headquarters.

We parted from our friends and sped on to Vittorio Veneto, which gives

its name to this last great battle, being the point on which those

Italian forces moved, whose purpose and whose successful achievement it

was to cut the Austrian Armies in two, separating the Armies in the

mountains from the Armies in the plain. Vittorio stands on and around

the summit of a little hill, itself one of the foothills, the older part

of the town picturesque with little winding streets, the newer part well

laid out with broad roads, shaded with avenues of trees. Here the

Austrian flight had been more rapid and the damage smaller. But we were

still many miles behind the ever advancing battle line. We determined,

therefore, to turn sharply eastward and make for Pordenone, in the hope

of coming up with the fighting thereabouts. For last night, we heard,

the Austrians were still defending themselves on the near side of that

town.

The road from Vittorio to Sacile grew thicker with advancing troops, at

first all Italian, then, as we approached Sacile, mixed Italian and

British, much Italian Cavalry and Artillery, then British Infantry and

some Batteries of Field Guns. In Sacile itself, which British troops had

liberated, the crush of troops was dense, and held us up for more than

half an hour. Union Jacks hung out from many houses, side by side with

the Italian tricolour. As we waited for a chance to go forward, a

Battalion of the Bisagno Brigade went past along the side of the road,

two deep, at a steady double. Several officers I recognised, whom I had

met at dinner at a little restaurant at Marostica many months before,

and again near Casa Girardi on the Plateau. We waved to one another and

cheered as they passed. When at last we moved on again, we found the

road from Sacile to Pordenone pretty clear for several miles and were

able to get up speed. But what a sight this road presented! Along it a

confused mass of Austrian transport was moving yesterday in headlong

retreat. They were bombarded by Artillery, ceaselessly bombed and

machine-gunned from the air. The slaughter here had been great, the

ditches were full of dead men and horses, and the loss in wrecked and

abandoned material of every kind had been immense. And the civilians,

who had been practically without food for many days, had been cutting up

and eating the dead horses. "Poverini!" said an Italian officer to whom

we gave a lift into Pordenone, "they are all starving and we have little

chance yet to bring them food."

Pordenone was ours. It had fallen in the early hours of this morning,

but the departing Austrians had burnt and wrecked it. The streets were

full of the debris and furniture which they had thrown out of the houses

and shops in the last mad search for loot. We pushed on, and came up

with British Infantry advancing, and the transport wagons and the

steaming field cookers of two Battalions, and some cyclist companies of

Bersaglieri. But the transport was at a standstill and the dismounted

men only going forward slowly. We soon discovered the cause. The wooden

bridge over the Meduna river was on fire, pouring forth clouds of smoke.

The Austrians had been here only four hours before and had blown up two

spans as they retreated and soaked the rest with paraffin and set it

alight. The bridge was effectually destroyed. Italian Cavalry, we heard,

had gone through the water in pursuit, and likewise some British

Infantry patrols, swimming and wading and making use of various

ingenious, improvised devices. But the Austrian had a good three hours

start, and was running fast and travelling light, it was thought.

But we, being unable to get our car across, turned northward along the

river bank and drove furiously and, after a mile or two, outran the

foremost Infantry patrols (I think, of the Royal Warwicks), who were

pushing cautiously forward, searching the woods and farmhouses for

lurking rearguards. And so it was that, first of all the Allied troops,

we four entered the little village of Nogaredo. And, as we came in, we

sang, very loudly and perhaps somewhat out of tune, the chorus of _La

Campana di San Giusto_, the forbidden song which to the Italian

Irredentists stands for somewhat the same officially repressed but

inextinguishable emotions, as that once forbidden song _The Wearing of

the Green_ stood for to the Nationalist Irishmen of a now vanished

generation.

"Le ragazze di Trieste

Cantan tutte con ardore,

'O Italia, O Italia del mio core,

Tu ci vieni a liberar!'"[1]

[Footnote 1: All the maidens of Trieste sing with passion, "O Italy, O

Italy of my heart, thou comest to set us free!"]

So to that village _we_ were the visible liberators. All the villagers

came running towards us, crowding around our car, weeping and cheering,

pouring out their stories, touching and holding and kissing us. It is

seldom that things happen with such dramatic perfection.

The last Austrians, they said, had been gone only half an hour. We

pressed on along a narrow road, but it was late afternoon, and the light

was failing. The road grew worse, and the mud thicker. Much retreating

traffic had only lately traversed it. At last we stuck deep in two muddy

ruts. The wheels skidded round helplessly. We could go neither forward

nor backward. Three of us got out and shoved with all our strength.

There was a crackle of rifle shots not far away. We were prepared for

an encounter. But nothing came of it. We got the car out at last, but

the road was too bad for further progress and it was almost dark. We

turned and drank up the remains of our "florium" and came back. But that

day had been unforgettable.

CHAPTER XL

THE COMPLETENESS OF VICTORY

The end was almost come. On November 3rd we received the official

announcement that an armistice had been signed, and that at 3 p.m. on

November 4th hostilities on the Italian-Austrian Front would cease. That

same day Trento, Trieste and Udine fell. One began to be aware of the

completeness of victory. On this day and the days that followed the

communiqués of Diaz were decisive and historical.

"November 4th. Noon. The war against Austria-Hungary which ... the

Italian Army, inferior in numbers and resources, undertook on the 24th

of May, 1915, and with unconquerable faith and stubborn valour conducted

uninterruptedly and bitterly for 41 months, has been won. The great

battle begun on the 24th October, in which there took part 51 Italian

Divisions, 3 British, 1 French, 1 Czecho-Slovak and 1 American Regiment

against 73 Austrian Divisions, is finished.... The Austrian Army is

annihilated. It has suffered very heavy losses in the fierce resistance

of the first days of the struggle and in the pursuit; it has lost

immense quantities of material of every kind and almost all its

magazines and depôts; it has left in our hands, up to the present, about

300,000 prisoners with complete staffs and not less than 5000 guns.[1]

The remnants of what was once one of the most powerful Armies in the

world are now flowing back in disorder and without hope up the mountain

valleys down which they came with proud self-assurance."

[Footnote 1: These figures increased later to more than 430,000

prisoners and 6800 guns.]

"November 4th, 4 p.m. According to the conditions of the armistice ...

hostilities by land, sea and air on all the fronts of Austria-Hungary

have been suspended at 3 p.m. to-day."

"November 6th. At 3 p.m. on the 4th of November our troops had reached

Sluderno in the Val Venosta, the Pass of Mendola and the Defile of

Salomo in the Val d'Adige, Cembra in the Val d'Avisio, Levico in the Val

Sugana, Fiera di Primiero, Pontebba, Plezzo, Tolmino, Gorizia,

Cervignano, Aquileia and Grado."

Some of these names filled me with memories of a year, and more than a

year, ago. Old Natale's message to the enemy chalked on our hut at Pec

had come true. We had soon come back.

* * * * *

The fighting was over! That night of the 4th of November all the sky was

lit up with bonfires and the firing of coloured rockets and white Véry

lights. One could hear bells ringing in the distance, back toward

Treviso, and singing and cheering everywhere. It was an hour of

perfection, and of accomplishment; it was the ending of a story. An

epic cycle of history was finished, the cycle of the wars of Italy

against Austria. The task of completing Italian unity was finished, so

far as a series of wars could finish it.

"The fight is done, but the banner won;

Thy comrades of old have borne it hence,

Have borne it in triumph hence.

Then the soldier spake from the deep, dark grave:

'I am content.'"

The soldier had done his duty, now let the statesman do no less. Let

wisdom and imagination make sure the fruits of valour.

* * * * *

The old Austria is dead, and from her grave, which Italian hands have

dug, are rising up new nations, the future comrades of the old nations

and of Italy, who in these bloody years has grown from youth to full

manhood. It has been said that a nation is a friendship, and the common

life of nations in the future must also be a friendship, necessarily

less intimate but in no way less real. The youth of the world must never

be called to swim again, with old age on its back, through seas of

needless death to the steep and distant cliffs of military victory.

There must be no more secret plots, nor seeming justification of plots,

by little groups of elderly men against the lives and happiness of young

men everywhere. The world must be made safe for justice and for youth.

* * * * *

Youth was rejoicing that night in Italy, when the war against Austria

ended. And not youth only, nor Italians only. The British troops loudly

and healthily and almost riotously sang also, all the temporary

soldiers and nearly all the regulars. Yet here and there were gloom, and

drab, wet blankets, trying to make smoulder those raging fires of joy.

In a few officers' Messes, especially among the more exalted units, men

of forty years and more croaked like ravens over their impending loss of

pay and rank, Brigadier Generals who would soon be Colonels again, and

Colonels who would soon be Majors. To have been, through long uneventful

unmental years, a peace-time soldier puts the imagination in jeopardy

and is apt to breed a self-centred fatuity, which the inexperienced may

easily mistake for deliberate naughtiness. Yet these brave men, who hate

peace and despise civilians, have many human qualities. They are

generally polite to women, and they are kind to animals and to those of

their inferiors who show them proper deference and salute them briskly.

It is not always easy to judge them fairly. And that night one did not

try. They jarred intolerably. They seemed a portent, though in truth

they were something less. They found themselves left alone to their

private griefs, ruminating regretfully over the golden age that had

suddenly ended, gazing into the blackness of a future without hope.

CHAPTER XLI

IN THE EUGANEAN HILLS

_November 12th_, 1918

It is all over. For a few days it seemed possible that we might be sent

northward, through redeemed Trento and over the Brenner and the crest of

the Alps and down through Innsbruck, to open a new front against Germany

along the frontier of Bavaria. But that will not be necessary now. It is

all over.

Our Battery is living partly in a little terra-cotta Villa and partly in

a barn close by. We are among the Euganean Hills, a group of little

humps, shaped like sugar loaves, which rise out of the dead level of the

Venetian Plain, south-west of Padua. Here Shelley wrote a famous and

beautiful poem, and Venice, on a clear day, is visible in the distance

from a monastery perched among trees upon one of the loftiest humps. Our

guns, which will never fire any more, sit in a neat row, "dressed by the

right," along the garden path outside the Villa, their noses pointing

across a grass lawn. Their names, which are the Battery's Italian

history, are painted on their muzzles and their trails in large white

letters, picked out with red upon a dark green ground: _Carso_, _Piave_,

_Altipiano_ and _Trentino_. _Trentino_ is my gun. They look very

ornamental in their new coats of paint, and with a high polish on their

unpainted metal parts.

It is an hour of anticlimax. There is nothing to do, and one has to

"make work" in a hundred silly, ingenious ways. Next week some of the

men who have been out of England for 19 months will go on leave. Then,

after a fortnight in England, unless something tremendous and unexpected

happens, they will all come back again. And there will still be nothing

to do. Was it Wordsworth who said that poetry is "emotion remembered in

tranquillity"? Wordsworth would undoubtedly have written much poetry

here. Our chief delight is Leary's musical voice. He sings to us in the

evenings after dinner, "_La Campana di San Ginsto_" and "_Addio, mia

bell', addio_" and choice _stornetti_, and "_Come to Ferrara with me_,"

a cheerful song of his own composing, set to a music-hall tune which was

famous three years ago, and "_We'll all go a-hunting to-day_," an old

song with a superb chorus. And so the days pass, one very like another.

I dreamed last night that a regular soldier of high degree and uncertain

nationality appeared to me and said, "Do you not see now, young man,

that peace is degeneracy, and that war is an ennobling discipline?" And

I, chancing my luck, replied, "Yes, the great von Moltke himself said

that peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream." Whereupon my

visitor changed into a white owl and vanished with a hoot. And I awoke,

and found that I had overslept myself and that the nine o'clock parade,

which I was due to attend, was already falling in outside.

Then said I to myself bitterly, "At any rate we here have all survived,

and, therefore, since war is the greatest of all biological tests, we

must all be very fit to have survived, especially that most fit young

man, who came out to the Battery from England a day or two before the

armistice was signed, after three years at Shoeburyness, and the fittest

of all must be those whose survival, apart from such dangers as

influenza and air raids, has never been in doubt, the valuable people

who have been kept in England, because they were members of concert

parties or football teams at the depôts, or officers' servants to

influential _imboscati_, or influential _imboscati_ themselves."

And then, with a great and well-disciplined effort, I pulled my thoughts

together, and said to myself, "Enough of these musings of the peace-time

soldier!"

CHAPTER XLII

LAST THOUGHTS ON LEAVING ITALY

On the 3rd of December I passed out of Italy, after eighteen months

spent as a soldier within her borders. These eighteen months will always

be lit up for me by the memory of a great comradeship between men of

Allied nations. We have lived together through the dark days and the

sunshine, through sorrow and joy, through uncertainty and defeat to

final victory.

I have been very fortunate in my personal relations in Italy. I have

found always among Italians, both civilian and military, and from simple

soldier to General, the most open friendliness, the most unsparing

kindliness, the most happy spirit of good fellowship. And on my journey

home I closed my eyes and imagined myself back once more at Venice in

full Summer, and at Milan, and at hospitable Ferrara, and at Rome in the

Spring, and on the shores of the Bay of Naples, and out on Capri, and in

the wonder world of Sicily,--and always among friends. And then my steps

went back in fancy to the battlefields, where our guns had been in

action. I saw again the great peaks and the precipitous valleys of the

Trentino. I saw the wreck of liberated Asiago, ringed round with

mountains whose sides were clothed with shattered pine trees, heavy with

snow, and I went down once more by that astounding mountain road from

Granezza to Marostica, with the Venetian Plain and all its cities spread

out beneath my feet, and Venice herself on the far horizon, amid the

shimmer of sunshine on the distant sea. I stood again on the bridge at

Bassano, looking up the Val Brenta, with Monte Grappa towering above me

on my right hand, and then turning south-eastward across the level plain

I heard again the rushing waters of the Piave and, crossing to the

farther side, passed through Conegliano, burnt out and ravaged, and

Vittorio Veneto, a name that will resound for ever, to the broken bridge

over the Meduna, east of Pordenone, and the village of Nogaredo, whither

I came as one of its first liberators. And, as in a dream, I saw Udine,

unspoilt and radiant as she was fifteen months ago, before Caporetto,

and poor little Palmanova, as I last saw her, wreathed in the black

smoke of her own burning, and the cypresses and the great church of

Aquileia and the lagoons of Grado.

Then the flying feet of memory carried me beyond the Isonzo, up the

wooded slopes of San Michele, where the dead lie thicker, and along the

Vippacco, running swiftly between banks thick with acacias, and among

the ruined suburbs of Gorizia, up towards those desolate lands, which

for future generations of Italians will be, I think, the holiest ground

of all,--the bare summit of Monte Santo, and the mountain-locked

tableland of Bainsizza, and the rocky, inexorable Carso. These rocks

have, perhaps, been more deeply soaked with blood than any other part of

the entire Allied line on any continent. Here died many thousands of the

bravest and the best of the youth of Italy. "Nella primavera si combatte

e si muore, o soldato." How many great lovers, fathers, thinkers, poets,

statesmen, that might have been, but never were, lie here! These lands

will ever be more thickly peopled with the cemeteries of the dead than

with the villages of the living, lands desolate and barren, yet strange

and beautiful. Clear and clean is the beauty of those graves in the

noonday brightness, delicate and tremulous in the early dawn and in the

soft light of a fading day, and for us, who think of those dead with a

proud and tender emotion, that beauty is, in some sort, a frail

consolation. The dust of strong men from the great mountains is buried

here, and of men from the historic cities and the small unknown towns

and the little white villages of Italy, and of peasants from the wide

plains, and of brave men from the islands, and a handful of Frenchmen

and Englishmen along with them, and very many of those tragic soldiers,

drawn from many races, who died in the service of the Austro-Hungarian

State, fighting against their own freedom. I see again, as vividly as

though it were yesterday, those high-hearted legions of Italy, sturdy

men and fresh-faced boys, going forward with a frenzied courage,

supported by an Artillery preparation which elsewhere would have been

thought utterly insignificant, to assault positions which elsewhere

would have been declared impregnable.

"The world," said Lincoln at Gettysburg, "will little note nor long

remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished

work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced; that

from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for

which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly

resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." So may it be! They

died for the dream of a greater, a free and a secure Italy, and, the

more reflective of them, for a better, more coherent world and no more

war. A part of their dream is already come true, but part is a dream

still, a debt to them that only we can pay. It will need to be a far

better world, with a progress sustained and ever growing through

centuries to come, if this tremendous sum of wasted youth, of broken

hearts, of embittered souls, of moral degradation, of wounds that cannot

be healed until all this ill-fated generation has passed away, if this

great sum of past and present evil is to be cancelled by future good in

the cold balance of historic reality. Of the dead we may say, their task

is over, their warfare is accomplished. But not of the living. The

future is theirs, to make or mar.

End of Project Gutenberg's With British Guns in Italy, by Hugh Dalton