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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXII

FROM SAN GIORGIO TO THE TAGLIAMENTO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXIII

FROM THE TAGLIAMENTO TO TREVISO

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXIV

THOUGHTS AFTER THE DISASTER

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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



CHAPTER XXV

FERRARA, ARQUATA AND THE CORNICE ROAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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



CHAPTER XXVI

REFITTING AT FERRARA

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

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

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

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

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

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

He spoke bitterly, as was not unnatural.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comitato di Preparazione Civile.[1]

CITTADINI,

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

CITTADINI,

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

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

[Footnote 1: Committee of Civilian Preparation.

FELLOW CITIZENS,

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

FELLOW CITIZENS,

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

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

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

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

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



PART V

A YEAR OF RESISTANCE AND OF PREPARATION

CHAPTER XXVII

IN STRATEGIC RESERVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marostica charmed me even more. Its battlemented walls are like those of Cittadella and Castelfranco, but in a better state of preservation and more picturesque, running up a rocky foothill behind the town and coming down again,—a most curious effect. These Alpine foothills for shape and vegetation are very like the Ligurian hills north of Genoa and round Arquata.