With British Guns in Italy | Page 5

officers. We were

at Amiens. I was last here ten months before, when my Division was
coming back from rest to fight a second time upon the Somme. I did
not sleep again, but watched the sunrise behind an avenue of poplars, as
we passed through Creil, and the woods of Chantilly shining
wonderfully in the early morning light. I spent that day in Paris and left
again in the evening.
Next morning, the 8th, I awoke at Bourg in High Savoy. Here too the
poplar dominates in the valleys. We ran along the shores of Lake
Bourget and up the beautiful valley of the Arc in misty rain. We arrived
at Modane at 10 a.m., and I was booked through to Palmanova, a new
name to me at that time. The train left an hour later and, as we lunched,
we passed through the Mont Cenis tunnel and slid rapidly downwards
through Alpine valleys, charming enough but less beautiful than those
on the French side of the frontier. Very soon it became perceptibly
warmer, electric fans were set in motion and ice was served with the
wine.
I found that I had six hours to wait at Turin before the train left for
Milan. My fleeting impression of Turin was of a very well-planned city,
its Corsi spacious and well shaded with trees, its trams multitudinous,
its many distant vistas of wooded hills and of the Superga Palace
beyond the Po a delight to the eye. But I found less animation there
than I had expected, except in a church, where a priest was ferociously
declaiming and gesticulating at a perspiring crowd, mostly women,
who were patiently fanning themselves in the stifling, unventilated heat.
I was an object of interest in the streets, where the British uniform was
not yet well known. Some took me for a Russian and some little boys
ran after me and asked for a rouble. A group of women agreed that I
was Spanish.
The train for Milan goes right through to Venice, so, being
momentarily independent of the British military authorities, I decided
to spend a few hours there on my way to the Front.
The carriage was full of Italian officers, chiefly Cavalry, Flying Corps
and Infantry. It is their custom on meeting an unknown officer of their
own or of an Allied Army to stand stiffly upright, to shake hands and

introduce themselves by name. This little ceremony breaks the ice. I
saw many of them also on the platforms and in the corridor of the train.
The majority, especially of their mounted officers, are very elegant and
many very handsome, and they have those charming easy manners
which are everywhere characteristic of the Latin peoples.
Nearly all Italian officers speak French. In their Regular Army French
and either English or German are compulsory studies, and a good
standard of fluent conversation is required. In these early days my
Italian was rather broken, so we talked mostly French. At Milan all my
companions except one got out, and a new lot got in. But I was growing
sleepy, and after the formal introductions I began to drowse.
* * * * *
I woke several times in the night and early morning, and, half asleep,
looked out through the carriage window upon wonderful sights. A
railway platform like a terrace in a typical Italian garden, ornate with a
row of carved stone vases of perfect form, and vines in festoons from
vase to vase, and dark trees behind, and then a downward slope and
little white houses asleep in the distance. This I think was close to
Brescia. Then Desenzano, and what I took to be the distant glimmer of
Lake Garda under the stars. Verona I passed in my sleep, having now
crossed the boundary of Lombardy into Venetia, and Vicenza and
Padua are nothing from the train. At Mestre, the junction for the Front,
all the Italian officers got out, and I went on to Venice.
Except for three British Naval officers I was, I think, the only foreigner
there, and a priest, whom I met, took me for an American. Everything
of value in Venice, that could be, was sandbagged now for fear of
bombs, and much that was movable had been taken away. I spent three
hours in a gondola on the Grand Canal and up and down the Rii, filled
with a dreamy amazement at the superb harmonies of form and colour
of things both far away and close at hand. And even as seen in war-time,
with all the accustomed life of Venice broken and spoiled, the
spaciousness of the Piazza S. Marco, and the beauty of the buildings
that stand around it, and at night the summer lightnings, and a
rainstorm, and a café under the