With British Guns in Italy | Page 6

colonnade, where music was being

played, will linger always in my memory. All the big hotels were
closed now, or taken over by the Government as offices or hospitals,
and the gondolas lay moored in solitary lines along the Grand Canal,
and even the motor boats were few and, as a waiter said to me, "no one
has been here for three years, but the people are very quiet and no one
complains."
CHAPTER III
FROM VENICE TO THE ISONZO FRONT
I left Venice next morning by the 5.55 train, and reached Palmanova at
half-past ten. As one goes eastward by this railway, there is a grand
panorama of hills, circling the whole horizon; to the north and
north-east the Carnic Alps and Cadore, their highest summits crowned
with snow even in the full heat of summer; eastward the Julian Alps,
beyond the Isonzo, stretching from a point north of Tolmino, down
behind the Carso, almost to Fiume in the south-east; and yet further
round the circle to the southward the mountains of Istria, running
behind Trieste and its wide blue gulf, whose waters are invisible from
this railway across the plain.
Of Palmanova I will write again. This was the Railhead and the
Ammunition Dump for the British Batteries. I stayed there that day
scarcely an hour, and then went on by motor lorry to Gradisca, the
Headquarters of "British Heavy Artillery, Italy." Here I lunched and
was well received by the Staff, who were expecting no reinforcements
and were astonished at my coming. It was decided, after some
discussion, to attach me temporarily to a Battery which had one officer
in hospital, slightly wounded by shrapnel. I continued my journey in
another motor lorry after lunch. Gradisca lies on the western bank of
the Isonzo, which is crossed close by at Peteano by a magnificent broad
wooden bridge, the work of Italian engineers. Gradisca had not been
badly damaged, the Austrians having made no great resistance here
against the Italian advance in May 1915, but Peteano had been laid
absolutely flat by Austrian twelve-inch guns. It had been utterly
destroyed in half an hour's intense bombardment some months before,

and many Italian hutments in the neighbourhood had been destroyed at
the same time.
Within sight of this bridge, at a distance of a quarter of a mile, is the
confluence of the Vippacco with the Isonzo. From this point the road
follows the Vippacco to Rubbia, the Headquarters of Colonel Raven,
who commanded the Northern Group of British Batteries. which I was
now joining. The five Batteries of this Group, known as "B2," were all
in positions on or near the Vippacco, firing on the northern edge of the
Carso, and eastward along the river valley. The southern Group, "B1,"
were on the Carso itself and operating chiefly against the famous
Hermada, a position of tremendous natural strength, directly covering
Trieste. B2 had the more comfortable and better-shaded positions, but
B1, though their guns were among the rocks and in the full heat of the
sun, were in easy reach of the sea, and had a Rest Camp at Grado
among the lagoons.
Raven's Group, B2, formed part of an Italian Raggruppamento, or
collection of Groups, under the command of a certain Sicilian Colonel
named Canale, a dapper little man who generally wore white gloves,
even in the front line. He was a fearless and capable officer and did all
in his power for the comfort of our Batteries.
From Rubbia I drove in a car to the Battery. As I left the Group
Headquarters, a number of wooden huts at the foot of the wooded
slopes of Monte San Michele, which rise upwards from the road, I went
under the railway which in peace-time connects Gorizia with Trieste. It
is useless now, being within easy range of the Austrian guns, which
have, moreover, broken down the high stone bridge on which the line
crosses the Vippacco. A young Sicilian Sergeant accompanied me as a
guide and pointed out Gorizia, some six miles away to the north, a
widely-scattered town, very white in the sunlight, lying at the foot of
high hills famous in the history of the war on this Front, Monte
Sabotino, Monte Santo, Monte San Gabriele, of which there will be
more for me to say hereafter.
The gun positions of my new Battery were situated just outside the
little village of Pec, inhabited mostly by Slovene peasantry before the

war, now all vanished. The village had been much shelled, first by
Italian and then by Austrian guns, and there was not a house remaining
undamaged, though several had been patched up as billets and
cookhouses by British troops. Another of our Batteries had their guns
actually in the ruins of the village, but ours were alongside a