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, "perhapsnowyou will send some of your generals and your troops to Italy. And so you will put us under orders and under obligations to you, and we shall become your slaves. Italians are used to being looked upon as the slaves of other nations." "No," I said, "all that is over. Those of us who know the facts, know what Italy has done and suffered for the Alliance in this war. It will not be forgotten. Moments of supreme crisis such as this test the value and the depth of an Alliance. And ours will stand the test."
But that day he was inconsolable. For Italy was wounded and bleeding, and the dramatic swiftness and horror of the disaster had bent her pride and almost broken it. But, though the future seemed black as a night without stars, the hope of a coming daybreak remained strong in the hearts of a few. But the struggle ahead would be cruelly hard. What had Italy left to offer those who would still fight in her defence? Still, as of old,
"Only her bosom to die on,Only her heart for a home,And a name with her children to be,From Calabrian to Adrian Sea,Mother of cities made free."
Yet this was a rich reward when, a year later, the dawn broke in all its glory.
* * * * *
I turned over and over in my mind in the weeks and months that followed, as fresh evidence accumulated, the meaning and the causes of the disaster of Caporetto, and gradually I came to definite and clear cut conclusions. It was the Second Army that had been broken, and in the course of the retreat had almost disappeared. It was a common thing to hear the Second Army spoken of as a whole Army of cowards and "defeatists." Many foreign critics, with minds blankly ignorant of nearly all the facts, seemed to think that the whole business could be accounted for by a few glib phrases about German and Socialist propaganda, or the supposed lack of fighting qualities in the Italian race. Yet it was this same Second Army, which in those now distant days in August had conquered the Bainsizza Plateau, amid the acclamations of all the Allied world. Whole Armies do not change their nature in a night, even when worn out with fighting and heavy casualties. The thing was not so simple as that.
* * * * *
In fixing responsibility for Caporetto, one must draw a sharp distinction between responsibility for the original break in a narrow sector of the line, and responsibility for not making good that break, before the situation had got hopelessly out of hand. In the former case the responsibility must rest partly upon the troops and subordinate Staff charged with holding that narrow sector and partly upon the High Command; in the latter case the chief responsibility, and a far graver one, must rest upon the dispositions of the High Command. This was the view apparently taken by the Commission appointed by the Italian Government to investigate the whole question, for the three chief Generals concerned were not only removed from their commands, but given no further employment and placed upon half-pay.
The original break was due to many causes. The great mass of German Divisions and Artillery was concentrated in the Caporetto sector. This fact should have been known to the High Command, and if the Italian troops holding the line at this point were, for various reasons, of poor quality, this also should have been known to the High Command, whose duty it is to know the comparative fighting power of different units. The High Command, when the battle started, claimed that they had known beforehand when and where the blow was coming, that all preparations had been made and that they were fully confident of the result. Such boasts have been made by other High Commands on other Fronts, on the eve of other disasters, and even after them. They greatly deepen the responsibility of those who make them.
The German Batteries on the Italian Front had a much larger supply of ammunition than the Austrians, including a large quantity of "special gas" shell. Many Italian troops, both Infantry and Artillery, subjected to prolonged gas bombardment, found the gas masks provided by the High Command quite inadequate. It was left for General Diaz some months later to order the equipment of the whole Italian Army with the British box respirator.
The number of guns lost by the Second Army was very great. I am told that one reason for this was the fact that the High Command had for some weeks been preparing a further big offensive against the Plateau of Ternova, had concentrated an abnormal number of Batteries on the Second Army Front, and had pushed the majority of the guns much further up than would have been justified, if an enemy offensive had been expected. Then, having made these preparations, the High Command hesitated and began to change its mind. But the disposition of the forward Batteries, thoroughly unsound for defensive purposes, was not appreciably altered, and a quite small enemy advance sufficed to make enormous captures of guns.
When the attack developed, some of the troops in the Caporetto sector unquestionably turned and ran, as troops of every great Army in this war have at times turned and run, under conditions of greater or less provocation. Then the High Command apparently lost its head, and attempted to issue to the world a communiqué of a character unparalleled in the history of this war, naming and cursing, as traitors to their country, certain particular Infantry Brigades. This document was very properly suppressed by the Italian Government.
But where were the reserves which the High Command should have had ready to repair the broken line? And where were the plans for retreating to prepared positions only a short distance behind? It was well known, and indeed it used to be another boast of the High Command, that a local reverse would be of no great importance, seeing that there were no less than twelve prepared lines between the Front, as it then ran, and Udine. I have seen some of those lines with my own eyes. I know what great and patient labour went to the making of them, and I know how strong they were. But, when the moment came to make use of them, no one outside the charmed circle of the High Command was in possession of the plans for their defence, and for falling back upon them in an orderly and systematic manner. It has been said that these plans could not have been made known beforehand to the Subordinate Commands for fear they should fall into the hands of spies. That would have been a small misfortune compared to what actually befell.[1]
[Footnote 1: In fairness to General Capello, the Second Army Commander, who had been highly and deservedly praised for the Bainsizza victory in August, and who was one of the generals removed from his command after Caporetto, it should be stated that on the latter occasion he was away from the Front on leave.]
When, owing to the omissions of the High Command, the break in the line was swiftly widened and the whole defensive scheme of the Second Army collapsed, it is true that confusion and panic began to spread through the Second Army like fire through dry grass. But it is not within the power of common soldiers, and especially of simple unlettered peasantry, such as most of these soldiers were, to repair the blunders of bad Staff work, and to make for themselves, on the spur of the moment and in face of deadly peril, plans which trained brains should have elaborated long before, at leisure and in safe secluded places. When leadership fails, the best troops fail too. But let one who comes of a nation, none of whose troops have ever acted as those troops of the Italian Second Army acted in those dreadful days, throw the first stone at Italy. That nation will be hard to find. It is not of this world. Those who know the Italian soldier know that no soldier in the world responds more readily to loyal trust, to common kindliness and to efficient and inspiring leadership. British and French officers, who have had opportunities of judging, know this as well as Italians. But the Italian High Command denied these things to the Italian soldier.[1] It is due to him and to the good name of Italy, which has been damnably traduced by prejudiced and ignorant men, that the truth should be spoken.
[Footnote 1: Among other charges which may be brought against the High Command at this time are, first, their failure to make adequate provision for the amusement and relaxation of the troops when in rest, such as the Y.M.C.A. and various concert parties provided for British troops, to combat inevitable war-weariness; second, failure to increase the most inadequate scale of rations; and, third, the attempt to apply, with strange disregard of the very different spirit of the Italian people, some of the worst and most brutal traditions of German discipline. All this was altered later by General Diaz and the Orlando Ministry.]
The dark and tragic story of the Italian retreat is lit up by many deeds of heroism, wherein the Italian soldier showed all his accustomed valour. And it was only by the valour of the Italian soldier that the retreat was stayed on the Piave line, which the High Command pronounced to be untenable and wished to abandon, but which the Cabinet at Rome, pinning their faith to the qualities of the Italian soldier rather than to the opinions of the High Command, ordered to be held at all hazards. And the Cabinet at Rome was right. The Italian line stiffened and stood upon the Piave, while the Allied reinforcements were still on the further side of the Alps. If only Lloyd George and Bissolati had had their way, and these reinforcements had been sent a few months earlier, if only we had been able to put a British Army Corps, with its full complement of aircraft, guns and shells, against the Hermada, if only we had had half a dozen tanks to send down the Vippacco Valley, what a different story there would have been to tell!
* * * * *
We ourselves were out of the first stages of that great defence. We had no ammunition, and we were terribly short of gun stores, though the bare guns had all been saved. And our men were very short of steel helmets and box respirators, and the boots and clothing of many were in a pitiful condition. But a small supply of ammunition came through from France, and it was decided to send one Section of the Battery into action on the Piave and the remainder back to Ferrara to refit. All gun stores and men's equipment were to be pooled, and those going back were to be stripped for the benefit of those going forward. I remember very vividly our Battery parade on the morning of the 4th of November, when we had to take from some men their greatcoats and even their caps, tunics and boots, in order to make up some sort of equipment for the Right Section which was going forward with the Major. I was put in command of the Left Section, stripped bare for its journey to Ferrara.
The evening before our departure I walked up and down the avenue outside our Villa and talked with Venosta, who had done splendid work in the retreat. He had heard from the survivors of a Cavalry Regiment, who had passed back along the road an hour before, that a Turkish Division was in Udine, and Turkish cavalry in Palmanova. Bulgarians also were said to be on this Front, raping, after Serbs, Greeks and Rumanians, Italians also. It was said that Turks had been on Faiti and Volconiac at the end. I had no sure evidence of this, but, if it was true, the Turks' notorious incapacity for an offensive would help to explain our surprising escape. What we had needed, all through the days of the retreat, was enough rain to swell the rivers and make heavy the roads. What we had got, after the first three days, was brilliant sunshine. The stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against Italy. "Dio uno ed unno!" said one Italian bitterly.
We reached Ferrara at 5 a.m. and drove in lorries from the railway station past the Castello of the d'Estes to the Palestro Barracks, the Depôt of the 14th Regiment of Italian Field Artillery. Here we were to be lodged by the Italian military authorities. We were received with every consideration and great hospitality. Our men had excellent quarters in the Barracks. Our officers were invited to have their meals in the Italian Artillery officers' Mess, which was a large and comfortable place and where the food was not only good, but very much cheaper than could have been got outside. The Colonel also offered to put riding horses at the disposal of any of us who should care to ride. I was much struck by the sensible lack of ceremony of this Italian Mess, by comparison with similar Depôt Messes in our own Army. There was no waiting in the anteroom for senior officers who were late, no asking permission of senior officers to leave the table early. Within the hours fixed for meals everyone came in and out as they pleased. There was no special table for the Staff, no rule against bringing evening papers into dinner, no aloofness, no pomposity. The only un-English formalities were the habit of turning and bowing as one left the Mess, if a number of officers were still present, and the universal Italian custom by which a newcomer at his first appearance would walk round and shake hands in turn with all those whom he did not know and introduce himself to them by name.
We were also invited to become members during our stay of the Circolo Negozianti, or Merchants' Club, of Ferrara. This Club had spacious premises in an old Palazzo, and was the warmest place in the town, having a most efficient system of central heating.
Ferrara is spread over a large area relatively to its population; it has broad streets and very few slums. But it has come down in the world since the Renaissance. Degenerate descendants of the d'Estes of that time stripped many of the Palazzi of their artistic beauties and sold them to help pay their debts. Ferrara is a city of old Palazzi, street after street of them, inhabited mainly now by well-to-do peasants, who take a pride in keeping up their exteriors. One of the most interesting sights in the city is the Palazzo Schifanoia, now used as a museum and containing frescoes by Cossa and Cosimo Tura. But what most appealed to me was the superb western façade of the Cathedral.
In peace time Ferrara is prosperous, though a little isolated from the main currents of Italian life. It is the chief centre of food distribution for this part of the country, and is well known for its bakeries. It is also an important centre for the hemp export trade.
After two days at Ferrara I was chosen to go to Arquata Scrivia, a little town on the main line north of Genoa. This had been selected as the Base for the British Forces in Italy, and I was to get in touch with the Ordnance people there, to give them a list of our really urgent requirements and try to hasten their delivery, so as to get us back into action as soon as possible. Siramo, an Italian Artillery officer who was attached to us forliaison, 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, asimboscatiare often apt to be, even when things are going badly at the Front. The Italian disaster evidently meant very little to them; they hardly realised it at all. They were the first cheerful people I had seen since the retreat began, and it was no doubt good for Siramo and myself to be cheered up. But it grated on both of us a little.
At my first interview I got the impression that the Ordnance were surprisingly efficient and would be very prompt in giving us what we wanted. But I gradually discovered that they really possessed very little of what they first promised me, and that nothing was known for certain as to when further stores would arrive. I telephoned to Ferrara that the immediate prospects were poor, and was told in reply to wait three or four days and see how much turned up. Having pestered various Ordnance officers to the limit of their endurance, I therefore decided to go away for two days.
Siramo went for two days to his family at Turin and I took the train to Genoa, arriving in the early afternoon. After lunch I set out to walk eastwards along the Cornice Road. It was a relief to my thoughts and feelings to be quite alone. The day was windy and sunless and rather cold, but the warm and audacious colouring of the Villas and the little fishing villages seemed almost to draw sunshine out of the dull sky. I stopped at Sturla and drank two cups of coffee and ate some biscuits, and decided to walk on to Nervi. It was now near the hour of sunset and the sun, having kept invisible all day, half broke through the clouds, turning them first red and then golden. So the sky was when I came to Quarto dei Mille, with its monument looking out to sea, that historic place whence Garibaldi and the Thousand set sail for their great adventure, the liberation of Sicily and Naples, and the unification of Italy, with British warships following them, some say by chance, so that the enemies of Italy dared not interrupt their passage.
Then said I to myself, standing all alone at Quarto, "Italy will not be defeated, nor even mainly saved from defeat by foreign aid. The strongest and best of her children will pull her through, even though they be not all the nation. But the rest will do their share also, and will follow, when the bravest lead. How young, and how uncertain of herself as yet, is Italy! And yet, how lovable, how well worth serving!" The Germans with their "special gas" and with other factors in their favour, counted on breaking, not only the line of the Second Army, but the morale of the Italian people. For a moment they seemed to have succeeded. In the darkest days I talked with many whose stuffing seemed all gone. But then, with the promise of Allied help, with the sight of even a handful of new French and British uniforms, and under the spell of the oratory of their statesmen and their journalists, things began to change and Italian hearts grew brave again.
The Italians are a mercurial people. If they are more easily cast down by defeat than we British, they are more easily encouraged by even the distant prospect of victory, and they react to influences that would leave us unmoved. The coarse insults of the enemy press were everywhere angrily quoted, and the national spirit rose to a red glow of passion. The Socialists Turati and Treves,—the latter the author of the famous phrase, "nessuno in trincee quest' inverno,"[1]—who before Caporetto had criticised the war as aggressive, imperialist and unnecessary, said now that all Italians must unite and fight on to drive back the invader from Italian soil. And cool brains, such as Nitti and Einaudi, reinforced all this with logical demonstrations of the economic impossibility of a separate peace, with the enemy Powers strained to the utmost by the blockade and Italy dependent on the Allies for shipping, food and coal. The Germans would have done far more wisely, if, instead of attacking, they had aimed only at holding the Italian Army along its old line.
[Footnote 1: "No one in the trenches this winter."]
I walked on from Quarto to Nervi and, as it was getting dark, I decided to take a tram for the last few kilometres. But all the trams were standing still, the current having been switched off for several hours. So I stood on the step of a tram and talked to the conductor about the war, and tried to cheer him up by telling him that the Germans were on their last legs, and were making their last great effort, and that the Allies had only to hold together a little longer, and throw sufficient force against the enemy here in Italy, in order to see a far bigger and more precipitate and disastrous retreat than Caporetto, and next time in the other direction. All this I not only said, but firmly believed (and it all came true within a year). At first he was very despondent, but he warmed up as I proceeded, and began to gesticulate again and regain animation and compliment me on my Italian. And then the current also was restored, and the tram moved on, and we came to Nervi, where I dined well and slept at the Albergo Cristoforo Colombo. I am not in general an admirer of palm trees, but they are sometimes impressive in the dusk, towering over one's head, as they do at Nervi, in the long mixed avenue of palms and orange trees which leads down to the station from the town.
Next morning I got up early and walked back towards Genoa along the Via Marina. The sun was shining on the sea and the dark rocks, the stone pines and the great aloes and the brightly coloured villas. There was an exhilaration in the air and I was in the midst of beauty, and, for the first time for many days, I was for a little while really happy. Later on I took a tram back to Genoa, and walked up to the tall lighthouse on the further side of the town, and looked westward at the great curve of the shore, beyond the breakwater and the sands.
In some of the stations along the line were placards, "Long live great old England," "Welcome to the valiant British Army," "Vive la France," "Vive la victorieuse Armée de Verdun." The first of the Allied reinforcements were arriving.
At Arquata station I met an advance party of the Northumberland Fusiliers. They told me that they had been quite moved by their wonderful welcome on the way through Italy and by all the hospitality shown to their officers and men at the stations where they had stopped. It gave me a queer thrill to see British Infantrymen again after many months, and this time on Italian soil.
* * * * *
After various orders and counter-orders I left Arquata for Ferrara on the 16th, with two truckloads of stores. But this was only a very small proportion of the minimum which we required.
I got back to Ferrara on the evening of November 17th, and shared a bedroom with Jeune, who had returned from leave in England, having missed all our most unpleasant experiences. Our brother officers of the Italian Field Artillery were very hospitable and courteous to us through those weeks of waiting. We could do nothing till the Ordnance sent us gun stores from Arquata, and these dribbled in very slowly, a few odds and ends at a time.
I often went out riding on the Piazza d'Arme and along the ramparts and in the country round Ferrara with Italian officers. Days were still very anxious, and the news from the Front not always good, and one rather avoided talking about the war. But one evening at dinner I succeeded in piercing the polite reserve of a little Captain who was sitting next to me. "Italy should have made it a condition of her intervention," he said, "that the other Allies should have sent troops to the Italian Front. Also more guns and war material. Italy, at the beginning of her war, had many heroes but few guns. The other Allies, equally with Italy, are without statesmen. Your Lloyd George is energetic, but——! The British are not really at war with Austria. They have soft sentiments towards her and don't want her to lose too much. The Jugo-Slav propaganda was at its height, and was being encouraged in Paris and London, at the very moment when Italy was being pressed by the French and British to enter the war.
"We have made too many offensives on our own, unaided. Cadorna should have refused, but he went on and on. He sacrificed thousands of lives uselessly. He demanded too much of his troops. He did not understand them. This last disaster was caused by Croats and Bulgarians, who spoke Italian perfectly, having lived among us and taken degrees at our Universities, getting through our lines in the first confusion, dressed in Italian uniform, and sending false telephone messages and signals in our own cipher, ordering a general retreat.[1] It was men from ——,[2] who first ran away at Rombon and Tolmino. It has been often proved in the history of our country that those men have no courage. Italians have too little unity."
[Footnote 1: I heard this story many times and I believe this was one of the causes of the rapid increase of the first confusion. The Austrians had tried this trick without success against the Third Army on the Carso, as had the Germans against us in France. There must obviously be a certain amount of confusion already existing, if the trick is to have any chance of succeeding.]
[Footnote 2: A certain province in Italy, not his own.]
He went on to speak of economic difficulties. "Italy is poor," he said, "and the Allies are rich. Yet coal costs four times as much in Italy as in France, and shipping is hardly to be had. Our Government has never driven hard enough bargains with the other Allies. After all, Italy came into the war as a volunteer, and not under the conscription of old treaties. But the Allies give her no credit for this. The French, since the war began, have recovered all their old 'blague.' They talk incessantly of what they have done, and despise everyone else. But look how unstable they are politically! They change their ministries, as often as some men change their mistresses. The Pope, too, is an enemy of Italy and a friend of Austria. He aims at the restoration of his temporal power. Many of the priests went about, both before and after Caporetto, trying to betray their country. Some told the soldiers that God had sent the disaster of Caporetto to show them the folly and the sinfulness of loving their corruptible country here below in poor earthly Italy, better than the incorruptible country of all good Catholics, God's eternal kingdom in the skies!"
He spoke bitterly, as was not unnatural.
I made the acquaintance also in the Mess of a Medical Officer, named Rossi, in peace time a University Professor of Nervous Pathology, who was now in charge of a hospital for "nervosi," or shell-shock cases, four miles outside the town. One afternoon Jeune and I accepted an invitation to visit this hospital. We drove out to it in a carrozza, accompanied by Rossi and a young woman, who went there daily to teach some of the illiterate patients to read and write.
No one can begin to understand what modern war means without some personal acquaintance with shell-shock cases. They are, especially for non-combatants, the most instructive of all the fruits of war, much more instructive than dead bodies or men without limbs. And then, having watched and talked or tried to talk with a variety of these still living creatures, let any man, even a profiteer or a theologian, look into his heart and ask himself whether he really agrees with the Chaplain, whom I have already quoted, that "three or four years of war may be tremendously worth while."
It needs a greater pen than mine to do justice to all we saw that afternoon, for we went through all the wards and saw all the sights there were to see. We saw a young Lieutenant, with large staring eyes, sitting up in bed. When we approached him, he jumped round in his bed very violently, as though his body had been shot out of a gun, and went on staring at us, speechless and with eyes full of wild terror. We saw two soldiers in the corner of a ward, their heads wobbling in perfect rhythm, ceaselessly from side to side, like the pendulum of a clock, with dead expressionless faces. We saw men cowering beneath their bed clothes, trembling with an endless terror. We saw a man who for months had quite lost his speech, and was now just able to whisper, almost inaudibly, "papa" and "mama," a middle-aged man with a beard. We saw a man with frightened eyes, like a child in a nightmare, with many of the outward signs of having been gassed, struggling for breath, gesticulating feebly, trying to ward off some imaginary blow. He had not been gassed, but wounded in the head. He was alone in a blue ward, where all our faces looked yellow. We saw a youth lying asleep, white as a sheet and with hardly any flesh left on his bones. He had been asleep for two months without ever waking. We saw a splendid, tall, bearded man, a Cavalry Captain, with a deep voice and a firm handgrip, who could realise the present, but had forgotten all the past. We saw a multitude of minor "tremblers," and men undergoing electrical treatment for paralysis and stiffness of various limbs. One little man, another University Professor, who was almost paralysed in both legs, tried to advance to meet us and nearly fell forward on the ground at our feet. I spoke also to a young man with a paralysed back and left arm. I said I hoped he would soon be better. "Yes," he said, "I hope soon to go back to the Front." For a moment I thought this was irony addressed to a countryman of Mr Lloyd George. But it wasn't. He really meant it. We went into the Convalescents' Mess. There were about twenty present, smiling and very gentle and quiet, like men who were not yet quite sure of the world. One elderly man, a Medical Captain, said to me, very softly, that it was a great pleasure to see visitors from the outside, "especially our Allies." At that moment I could easily have wept. Such sights as I had seen did not physically sicken, nor even much horrify, me. They just tautened all my nerves and made me feel that all my questions were impertinent, and all my good wishes flat and empty, and that I resembled a visitor to a Zoo.
On the way back to Ferrara we talked of literature and Rossi, basing himself chiefly on Wells and Kipling, said that the English, judged by their modern writers, seemed to be a race "logical, but a little isolated."
Two days later the Major and the Right Section of the Battery came to Ferrara, being replaced on the Piave by a section of another Battery. On the 1st of December British Infantry, belonging to the XIVth Corps, moved into the lines for the first time, taking over the Montello sector, to the south of the Italian Fourth Army. This sector was to be held by British troops for four months, but it is worth while again to emphasise the fact that nearly a month had now elapsed since the great Retreat had been brought to an end by the unaided effort of Italian troops. The situation now seemed well in hand, and a further break not at all likely.
There had been a striking scene in the Italian Chamber about this time, when the Prime Minister, Orlando, announced that high military opinion had been opposed to the holding of the Piave line, recommending a further retreat to the line of the Mincio, or the Adige, or even the Po, which would have involved the surrender of Venice, Padua, Vicenza and Verona. But the Cabinet at Rome had rejected these recommendations and ordered that the Piave line should be held at all costs, and the valour of the Italian common soldier had triumphed over the forebodings of the generals.
On the 8th, our re-equipment being at last complete, we were warned to join the XIth British Corps on the arrival of our transport. The end of our stay at Ferrara was now in sight, and our last days were full of partings. The Major told me how one morning a little old man, apparently an artisan, ran after him down the road and, speaking excellent French, said how fine the British soldiers looked, and how splendid the news of the capture of Jerusalem was, and then insisted on his going into a café and drinking a glass of vermouth with him and, on parting, held his hand for several moments, gazing into his eyes with a look of affection and pride.
On the 9th a little ceremony took place in the Artillery Mess, where the British officers presented a silver cup, suitably inscribed, to their brother officers of the Italian Artillery. There was a large gathering. My own Major, who was in command of British troops at Ferrara, made the presentation, and the Italian Commandant made an eloquent reply.
On the 10th I told the page boy at the Circolo that the future of the world was in the hands of himself and the rest of the young, and that they must see to it that there were no more wars. This speech made him open his big brown eyes a bit wider! I had often talked to this boy before, and he was, I think, rather interested in me, thinking me no doubt a queer and unusual sort of person. He used to steal moments to come and enter into conversation with me when none of the older club servants were in sight. If any of them appeared in the distance, he used to pretend that I had called him for the purpose of ordering a drink, and bolt to the bar.
On the 11th another presentation ceremony took place, this time at the Circolo. Those of us who had enjoyed honorary membership here presented to the Club two small silver clocks. The Major again made a short speech and the President of the Club replied, expressing the hope that the hours might be short, which these clocks would record before the hour of final victory. The cordiality of all the members of the Club at this meeting was very memorable. One old gentleman of 76 years of age told me that I was the very image of his son who was serving at the front in the Artillery, and with tears in his eyes kissed me on both cheeks. "Permit this sign of affection," he said, "seeing that here we are in the midst of friends."
That afternoon a few of us had tea for the last time at Finzi's, a favourite haunt of mine between the Castello and the Cathedral. After I had said a few words of farewell, Signor Finzi said to me, in one of those perfectly turned compliments which Italians always pay to foreigners endeavouring to speak their language, "Lei parla la lingua di Dante,"[1] and Signora Finzi gave to each of us a small Italian flag.
[Footnote 1: "You speak the language of Dante."]
That night our transport arrived, and our departure was fixed for the following morning. The 12th of December was a day that I shall vividly remember for the rest of my life. We left Ferrara about 1 p.m. after one of the most enthusiastic demonstrations I have ever seen. That morning the town had been placarded far and wide with the following poster:—
Comitato di Preparazione Civile.[1]
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.
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.
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.
We invite you to be present and to salute our brave and faithful Allies. They should be made to feel that your hearts, in unison with theirs, throb with hope and faith.]
By eleven o'clock a large crowd was already gathering outside the Barracks. At half-past we marched out into the street. In front of us went the municipal brass band, gay with cocks' feathers, and school-children carrying four banners on long flagstaffs. There was tumultuous cheering and clapping from a dense crowd. Flowers were showered upon us, and a very handsome girl gave me a bouquet of red roses. The band played impossible march music, so that we weren't able to keep much of a step.
But the enthusiasm was intense. Spectators thronged all the windows overlooking our route, and the cheering crowd stretched thick and unbroken along both sides of the street all the way. I noticed a specially enthusiastic group on the steps of the Castello, and several busy photographers. In between the efforts of the band our men sang. Outside the station we marched past the Italian General Commanding the District. Then we were halted and the General made a speech. I happened to look round, and found standing beside me, looking up at me, wide-eyed and wondering, the page boy from the Circolo, whom I had harangued on the destiny of the world's youth, and afterwards tipped. The band was playing over and over again, at short intervals, God Save the King, the Marcia Reale, the Marseillaise, the Brabançonne and the Marcia degli Alpini. Whenever any of these national anthems was played, all the troops stood at attention, and we officers at the salute.
Then a little man with a black beard and an eager manner stepped forward and mounted a chair, and on behalf of the Association of Italian Teachers wished us good luck. He spoke in English. He told us that his wife was "an Englishman," and recalled the names of Garibaldi and Gladstone, Palmerston and Cavour. He then presented to the Major an Italian Flag, which was handed to our Battery Sergeant-Major to be carried at the head of the troops as they marched into the station. Many Italian officers were present to say personal good-byes, and an immense crowd was on the platform cheering and singing, and distributing gifts and refreshments to our men. One gift was a little piece of tricolour ribbon, which an old woman gave to one of us. It had a note pinned to it addressed "to a brave British soldier," saying that she had a son at the Front who always carried just such a little piece of ribbon as a talisman, cut off the same roll, and that it had always kept him safe, and that it would keep the British soldier safe too. The note was signed "Tua Madrina" ("your god-mother").
At last it seemed that everyone was aboard, and the train started. But it was then discovered that the Major, Jeune and Manzoni had been left behind, not expecting the train to start so soon. They had chased it for a hundred yards down the line, but failed to catch it up. So the stationmaster telephoned to Rovigo to stop the train there till the three missing ones arrived, which they ultimately did, riding on an engine specially placed at their disposal. So ended our stay at Ferrara, in a blaze of wild enthusiasm. And I believe that, collectively, we left a very good impression behind us.
Our train reached Cittadella shortly after dusk. We interviewed a British R.T.O., who had only taken up his duties five minutes' before our arrival, and so not unnaturally knew nothing about us. The Major proposed that the train should be put into a siding and that we should spend the night in it. This was done. We went into Cittadella, but found everything in complete darkness, most of the houses sandbagged, and all shops, cafés and inns closed at dusk by order of the military. We succeeded, however, in getting a meal of sorts, and then went back to the train and turned in early. We were woken up a little after midnight by two British Staff officers, who were very vague and ignorant, but told us to go next morning to San Martino di Lupari, a little village midway between Cittadella and Castelfranco. This we did and found pretty good billets. Monte Grappa loomed over us to the north, deep in snow. I did not go into Cittadella by daylight, but only saw its battlemented outer walls.
Then for a few days nothing happened, except that everyone seemed to have caught a cold. We were now part of the XIth British Corps, who were concentrated in the surrounding district and formed for the moment a strategic reserve, which might be sent anywhere according to the development of the situation. If nothing particular happened, we should probably go into the line south of the XIVth British Corps on the Piave. If, on the other hand, the Italians were driven back in the mountains to the north of us, or were forced to retire down the Brenta Valley,—and this danger had not yet quite passed,—we should move up the mountains and take over part of the Italian line, with the French probably on our right. We received tracings of several possible lines of defence, on the plain itself and on the near side of the mountain crest, described as the "Blue Line," the "Green Line," etc., which we were required to reconnoitre with a view to finding Battery positions and O.P.'s. They were all very awkward lines to defend, as the enemy would have splendid observation and we practically none at all.
On the 15th the Major went out in the car reconnoitring to the east. He met some Alpini on the road to whom he said, "Fa bel tempo,"[1] and they replied, "Le montagne sono sempre belle;"[2] also an old man who had never seen British soldiers before, and was tremendously excited and pleased, and shouted with joy.
[Footnote 1: "It's beautiful weather."]
[Footnote 2: "The mountains are always beautiful."]
On the 16th the Major went out again with Jeune and myself to look for Battery positions for the defence of the line at the foot of the mountains. We went through Cittadella and Bassano, then southwards along the Brenta to Nove, and then back through Marostica and Bassano. Bassano is a delightful old town, with many frescoes remaining on the outer 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.
At San Trinità, just outside Bassano on the road to Marostica, is a very fine cypress avenue. There was a possible Battery position here. I noticed also a row of cypresses standing at intervals of about fifty yards along a hillside, dark and tall amid a mass of grass and rocks and brown fallen leaves. The weather was clear and cold, but the snow had shrunk to subnormal on the foothills. The Weather God was still favouring the enemy. It was very still, though occasionally shells burst over the Grappa. But the hills muffle the sounds beyond them.
On the way back we passed a Battalion of Alpini marching up, many of them very young. I thought of the Duke of Aosta's latest message to the undefeated Third Army: "A voi veterani del Carso, ed a voi, giovani soldati, fioritura della perenne primavera italica."[1] Splendid Alpini! They are never false to their regimental motto, "di quì non si passa!"[2] They never fail. But nearly all the first Alpini, who went forth to battle in May 1915, are dead now.
[Footnote 1: "To you, veterans of the Carso, and to you, young soldiers, flower of the eternal Italian spring."]
[Footnote 2: "No one passes here!"]
On the 20th I went out in a side-car with Winterton to look for positions in the hills above Marostica. Reconnaissances of the back lines were now to be discontinued, a sign, we hoped, of diminishing apprehension and an improving military situation. At San Trinità on the way back we collided with an Italian wagon and had to stop for repairs. A number of Italians gathered round, one of whom I discovered to be a priest, conscribed to serve with the Medical Corps. I bantered this man in a friendly way about secret drinking and the confessional and women and paradise, causing uproarious delight among the bystanders. And the priest took it all in excellent part.
On the 22nd we heard that, irrespective of the movements of the rest of the Corps, a special Group of Heavy Artillery was to be formed, including ourselves, to be lent to the Italian Fourth Army in the mountains. There began to be rumours of an offensive on our part.
On the 23rd we made a reconnaissance up the mountains to look for positions. We started through Bassano, which the Austrians had begun to shell the day before with long range guns, starting a trickling, pitiful exodus of terrified civilians. Just before reaching Marostica we struck up a valley running northwards past Vallonara. The road soon began to rise more steeply. It was a war road, broad and of splendid surface, one of those many achievements of the Italian Engineers, which entitles them to rank easily first among the engineers of the great European Armies.[1] Before the war this road had been in parts a mere mule track, in parts non-existent. We went through a number of little Alpine villages, Crosara, Tortima, Fontanelli, Rubbio. We had soon risen more than three thousand feet above the plain, which lay far beneath, spread out gloriously like a richly coloured carpet, green, white and brown, through which ran two broad, twisting, silver threads, the rivers Brenta and Astico. There had been more than a hundred bends in the road up to this point, but the gradient was never uncomfortably steep. Snow lay thick on the higher levels and the pine and fir trees were all snow-crowned. Sometimes the road ran along the edge of rocky gorges, dropping sheer for hundreds of feet below, with a great mountain wall on the other hand rising sheer above us. The air grew perceptibly colder as we mounted higher.
[Footnote 1: I have seen it stated, by an impartial authority, that there has been no roadmaking in war time to compare with that of the Italians on the Alpine and the Isonzo Fronts and in Albania, since the Napoleonic wars. A distinguished British engineer, with great experience of roadmaking in many countries, has also told me that in his opinion the Swedes are the best roadmakers in the world, the Italians a close second, and the rest of the world some way behind.]
We turned out of view of the plain over undulating snow fields and down a long valley and came out on a small plateau, screened by a gradual ridge from the eyes of the enemy. Here we provisionally chose a Battery position close to a small solitary house, known as Casa Girardi, on the edge of a pine wood. All round Italian guns were firing in the snow. We went on to Col. d'Astiago, which would be our probable O.P. The summit commanded a wonderful view of the high mountains to the northward, Longara and Fior, Columbara and Meletta di Gallio, and the sheer rock face of the Brenta gorge, and the stream far below, and the great mass of the Grappa rising beyond.
As we came down, lorry loads of Italian troops passed us going up, Alpini, Bersaglieri, Arditi and men of the 152nd Infantry Regiment. They cheered us wildly as they passed, waving their caps and crying, "Avanti! Avanti! Viva l'Inghilterra! Viva gli Alleati!" And as the string of lorries turned round and round the spiral curves of the road, now high above us, they were cheering and waving still, until they disappeared from view.
* * * * *
The Battery ate their Christmas dinner at San Martino, though the air had been thick with talk of an immediate move. On this, as on other, occasions the Major made an excellent speech, in the course of which he said: "You will be going very soon into a place where, before this war, no one would have dreamed that Siege Artillery could go. You were the first British Battery to be in action in Italy, and you will probably be the first British Battery to be in action in the Alps. We shall be very uncomfortable, at any rate for a time, but we shall pull through all right, as we always have before. It will be an honour to be proud of, and an experience to remember for the rest of our lives. And I know that whatever happens to us in this coming year, you will all behave as splendidly in the future as you have always done in the past."
The enemy was doing a good deal of night bombing at this period. Treviso and Padua were attacked with great persistency, so much so that the British G.H.Q. decided to move from the latter city to some smaller and more peaceful place. We used to hear the bombing planes coming over nearly every night and explosions more or less distant. They bombed Bassano, Cittadella and Castelfranco, the latter especially because the French had their Headquarters there. But luckily they left San Martino alone, thinking it too small to worry about. There seemed to be no anti-aircraft defences anywhere. But our Air Force soon mitigated the nuisance by raiding their aerodromes, and brought down a number of hostile planes in air fighting.
Our Staff again brought themselves into notice at Christmas by altering our official address from "B.E.F. Italy" to "Italian Expeditionary Force." I heard that the distinguished General, who introduced this reform, estimated that it would hasten victory by several months. But the stupid soldiers and their stupid relatives at home, having got into the habit of using the abbreviation "B.E.F.," shortened the new address to "I.E.F.," and the stupid postal people began to send the letters to India! And then the distinguished General had to issue another order, pointing out that "this abbreviation is unauthorised" and that "this practice must cease."
In the midst of such excitements the New Year began, and the Major was awarded the D.S.O. for work on the Carso. He was as delighted as a child, and I too was very glad. This decoration, even more than most others, has been much too freely dished out during this war among quite undeserving people, who have simply made an art of playing up to their official superiors. The Major, however, had always been something of a thorn in the side of various Headquarters, and seldom hesitated to speak his mind both to, and of, Colonels and Generals and Staff officers generally. For this reason, and also for others, I consider that he deserved a D.S.O. a great deal more than many who received one.
The Major's words were soon to come true, after many of those delays and conflicting orders of which the victims of war time "Staff work" have profuse experience. On the 7th of January we moved up the mountains into the position previously selected near Casa Girardi. We were the first British Battery to go up. Two others and a Brigade Headquarters were to follow, when it had been seen how we got on. When in doubt, try it on the dog!
It began to snow as we came into Marostica, and we had great difficulty with the lorries even on gentle gradients. The roads were frozen hard and in places very slippery. We managed, however, to reach Casa Girardi before nightfall and found that our advance party had put up some wooden huts, and cut some trees for fuel. All that night the snow came down in clouds, but the next day, and the next few following, were very fine. The sun shone all day long from a cold, cloudless sky upon a waste of flashing snow, with here and there trees sticking out of it, and strange red morning lights in the sky behind it, and sweeping winds across it, and in the sunset the white hillsides slowly changed to a mauve pink. It was a scene of wonderful beauty. But the temperature was ten degrees below zero one day at noon, and the next day twenty-four below zero at 9 a.m. and nine above zero at noon.
These conditions were disconcerting to good shooting, the lower temperatures not having been contemplated by those who compiled our range table in England. But we got all four guns satisfactorily registered by the second day, to the evident pleasure of the Italian Colonel under whose command we were temporarily placed. This man had a somewhat ferocious appearance and a reputation for great rudeness, both to his superiors and his subordinates in the military hierarchy. It was said that, but for this, he would long ago have been a General. To us, however, he showed his politer side, patting the Major on the back and repeating several times "buon sistema, buon sistema!"
The physical discomfort of those early days was great, but we were full of buoyancy and health. Everything froze hard during the night, one's boots, one's clothing, if damp when taken off, the ink in one's fountain pen. In the morning water poured into a basin froze hard in a couple of minutes and the lather froze on one's face before one had time to shave. The Major, breaking through one of the most fundamental traditions of the British Army, announced that no one need shave more than once in three days. The morning after our arrival we had a discouraging breakfast. No fire could be got to burn and no tea had been made. There was nothing to eat except a few very hard ration biscuits and some eggs boiled hard the night before, and now frozen through and through. One cracked the shell and found icicles beneath, and miserably held fragments of egg in one's mouth until they thawed!
But gradually, by patient work and organisation, these early troubles were surmounted. The whole Battery had been provided with Italian greatcoats and other Italian mountain equipment,—white Alpine boots lined with fur, alpenstocks, spiked snow grips, which could be fastened on to one's boots like skates, and white clothing to put on over the top of everything else, to render us invisible against a snowy background. I used to hear some amusing comments in the Battery on our Alpine situation. "This is the sort of thing you see pictures of in books, but…!" "I suppose folks would pay quids in peace time to see this!"
"Why, it's like a blooming Cook's tour!"
Being the first of the British who had been seen in these parts, we were objects of great interest to the Italians, who used to collect in crowds to watch our guns firing. We became great friends with the members of a mixed Mess not far away, consisting of two Anti-aircraft Batteries and the personnel in charge of a large ammunition dump. Between this Mess and our own there were frequent exchanges of hospitality.
One day an Italian General's car skidded into a ditch close to our position. We supplied a party of men to get it out again and the General, thanking us, asked if there was anything we wanted. The Major told him that we should like two or three more huts and two good stoves for cooking. A few days later these were delivered by the Italian authorities. Our own Brigade Commander, who had now followed us up the mountains with his two other Batteries, noticed these things and asked how we had come by them. When we told him, he seemed displeased, and next day we got an official letter to inform us that "it has come to notice that British units have in some cases recently been approaching the Italian authorities direct…. This practice is irregular and must cease…. Indents must be submitted through the proper channels." We smiled and obeyed. But we kept our huts and stoves which were better than any which we should have been likely to get "through the proper channels."
We were very short of water except snow water, there being only one waterpoint for all troops within several miles. Here there was a long queue waiting most of the day. It is probably not generally known that it takes ten dixies full of snow, when melted down, to make one dixie full of water. For this and for hygienic reasons snow water was not much use to us. We were not at this time required to fire very much, but we were warned to get acquainted with the surrounding country, as an action of some importance might be coming off before long. This provided the occasion for several reconnaissances.
On January 15th the Major and I went up Monte Costahmga, a few miles to the west. It was a ziz-zag, scrambling track, and it was thawing enough to make everything rather unpleasant. But we gained some, useful new knowledge.
On the 24th, Jeune, together with an Italian officer, a telephonist and myself made a long day of it. Starting early, we were on the top of Costalunga about 9 o'clock, were given a guide by an Italian Field Battery on the summit and went on, along a mountain road commanding a magnificent view, to Cima Echar. Here was a good O.P. from which I got my first sight of Monte Sisemol and Asiago, of which part of thecampanilewas at that time still standing. But it was brought down by Italian shell fire very soon afterwards. I remember thinking that the whole Asiago Plateau should be easy to retake, if we only brought up enough guns. Later on I began to realise that it would not be as easy as it looked.
It was impossible to get telephonic communication with the Battery from Cima Echar, so we could not, as we had hoped, do from there some registrations on wire and trench junctions on Sisemol, which were among our allotted targets. We therefore went back to Costalunga, where the Italian Field and Mountain Batteries along the crest were firing away with great vigour, and after an excellent lunch, which had been hospitably prepared for us, went down again into the valley and walked several miles further west to Monte Tondo.
I noticed at lunch, as on several other occasions lately, a change in the Italian attitude to good weather. They no longer hoped that it would break and so prevent further Austrian offensives. They hoped it would continue and so permit offensives of their own. Their morale was rapidly rising. We had, indeed, received the previous day the artillery portion of an elaborate offensive plan, but no date had yet been fixed for it.
We climbed up Monte Tondo and down the other side and made our way to an O.P. in a front line trench. For fifty yards of the way there was a break in the trench line and we had to run across the open through knee-deep snow. But the Austrians didn't fire. From this O.P. we had again a fine view of Asiago and the country round it. After delays connected with the telephone, we succeeded in registering two targets. While we were firing, all the woods and houses grew rosy in the sunset. It was dark when we finished. We went back with a Major of the Pisa Brigade, a quiet, spare little man, of great energy and exhausting speed of movement. He gave us coffee and showed us maps at his Brigade Headquarters and then sent us on to the Regimental Headquarters, further down the hill, where they gave us rum punch, believing, as all Italians do, that an Englishman is never happy unless he is drinking alcohol. We got back to the Battery in the moonlight.
On January 27th the long expected action began, and our Brigade lost one of its best officers, who was hit in the head in the front line O.P. on Monte Tondo. His steel helmet and the skill of Italian doctors just saved his life, but he was permanently out of the war. The Italians put their best doctors right forward in the advanced dressing stations. All that day we bombarded enemy Batteries and cross roads and barbed wire. Next morning the Italian Infantry carried Col Valbella and Col d'Echele by assault. The day after they took also Col del Rosso, and beat back very heavy counter-attacks. The Sassari Brigade and a Brigade of Bersaglieri specially distinguished themselves. It was an important and useful success. It considerably improved our line between the Asiago Plateau and Val Brenta, it deprived the enemy of the secure use of the Val Frenzela, and it was the first offensive operation of any importance undertaken by the Italians since the great retreat. Its success went to prove that the Italian Army had been effectively reorganised, and that its morale was again high.
From my sleeping hut and from the Battery Command Post I used to hear for days afterwards the Italian Infantry singing in great choruses, far into the night. There was triumph in their songs, and there was ribaldry and there was longing. I thought I knew what dreams were in their hearts, and, if I was right, those dreams were also mine.
The advance left us a long way behind the new front line, and we expected to move our guns forward; indeed we selected and asked to be allowed to occupy a very good position behind Montagna Nuova. But this was not allowed, and we stayed where we were for another six weeks. It snowed a great deal and we fired very little. But we had plenty to do to keep pathways dug between the guns and the huts; often we had to clear these afresh every hour.
During this time I made the acquaintance of several interesting Italians and Frenchmen. Among these was Colonel Bucci, who had been attached the year before to the Staff of one of the British Armies in France. He was now in command of a Regiment of Field Artillery, including a group of Batteries known as the Garibaldian Batteries, which were always placed at their own request in the most forward positions. I heard that, when he took over this command, he sent for all his officers and said, "Now here we are, some old men and some young men and two or three boys, and we are all here for the same purpose and I hope we shall all be always the best of good friends. But, as a matter of convenience, someone has got to be in command of the others, and I have been chosen because I am the oldest."
He used to tell an amusing story of an encounter he had in France with a British officer from one of the Dominions, who walked into his bedroom late one night, after a liberal consumption of liquor, and said he "wanted the fire" and asked if Bucci was "that Portuguese." Bucci, having persuasively but vainly asked him to go away, got out of bed and genially taking him by the shoulders,—he is a powerful man,—ran him out into the passage. Whereat the British officer, surprised and protesting, said, "You have no business to treat me like that. Don't you see that I am a Major and have three decorations?" pointing to his left breast. "Yes," said Bucci, "and I am a Colonel, and I have some decorations too, but I don't wear them on my nighty, and I want to go to sleep."
He had been in Gorizia before Caporetto, and had kept, as a melancholy souvenir, the maps showing the line of his own Regiment's retreat. "I call it the Via Crucis," he said. "I want to go back. I want to see an advance across the Piave with Cavalry and Field Artillery. I want to advance at the gallop. I have applied to be sent down there." He was a natural leader of men, and I felt that I would willingly follow him anywhere.
We saw a good deal too of the officers of a French Observation Balloon. One of their officers was a tall man, promoted from the ranks, with big upturned moustaches, a delightful smile and twinkling eyes. He smoked more cigars than any man I have ever met. He smoked them, like some men smoke cigarettes, one after another all the evening, with no interval between. He came from Marseilles. Another was from Auvergne, always most elegantly dressed. He never smoked at all, for he was very proud of his white teeth. He spoke Italian and German, but no English. A third was a little blonde Alsatian business man. He was usually rather quiet, but one evening I saw him roused, when someone had said something that displeased him about Alsace. Then he showed us that he could be eloquent when he chose.
They are very implacable, these Frenchmen. Undoubtedly Clemenceau spoke in their name, when he said, "my war aim is victory." Another Frenchman said to me once, "when Clemenceau is speaking, no one dares to interrupt, for they know it is the voice of the soldier at the Front speaking." And one can scarcely wonder that they are implacable. In Alsace-Lorraine and in the occupied territories of Northern France, they say that it is known with complete certainty that the daughters and wives and widows of many French officers and men have been compelled to take up their abode in brothels, and there to await at all hours of the day and night the visits of their country's enemies. Is it surprising that certain French Regiments, knowing these things, never take prisoners? And can one fail to admire, even if one does not unconditionally agree with, the soldier who would fight on and on, until everyone has been killed, rather than accept anything less than a complete victory?
It is all but impossible for a foreigner to measure the spiritual effects upon a proudly and self-consciously civilised Frenchman of these unpardonable, brain-rending, heart-stabbing provocations. But the statesman at home who, drawing good pay and living in comfort far behind the Front, is ever ready to declare that his country "shall continue to bleed in her glory" is a less admirable spectacle. It is his business to conceive some subtler and more comprehensive war aim than bare military victory, and to make sure that, when he has died safely in his bed and been forgotten, other men shall not have to do over again the work which he complacently bungled. A fighting soldier, who risks his life daily, may speak brave words, which are indecent on the lips of animboscato, whether military or civilian.