We had crossed the pontoon bridge and were making our way along the canal bank when there was the report of a gun not very far away in the enemy’s lines, and the screech of a shell passing over our heads proved beyond a doubt that the “Daily Strafe” was about to commence. The shell burst on the outskirts of the town and in the direction in which we were going. My companion, who was walking on ahead, called out jocularly that we should be “just in time.” From now the firing increased every minute, and it seemed to me that the sole objective of the Austrian gunners was the place where we had left our car. We met several groups of soldiers as we went along, and I noticed that if a shell happened to be coming over just then, the majority of the men always stopped and crouched down against the protecting wall of the trench. This prompted my asking my companion what he considered to be the best thing to do when under fire. “Take no notice of it,” was his laconic reply. In Monfalcone the streets were nearly deserted, though whether in consequence of the shelling commencing or some other cause, I could not tell; anyhow, as there was nothing further to see that day we returned to Udine “in time for lunch.” A couple of days later I was back again on the Carso. A big attack on the Austrian positions at Veliki Hribach, near Doberdo, having suddenly developed. Difficulties had to be surmounted here which were totally different to any previously encountered, as the offensive was made through close-growing woodland. An important sector of the Carso district to the north of Trieste consists of wooded country, and directly bars the Italian advance in that region. The ground in question was artificially planted by the Austrian Government some years ago under a scheme to reclaim the Carso and convert it into forest tracts. Plantations of fir trees were laid out over a large area, and these are now grown into the woods, which present a very serious obstacle to the Italians. Sheltered by the almost impenetrable cover which the dense growth of immature trees offers, the Austrians had constructed Torres-Vedras-like series of fortified positions among the trees along the ridges that intersect the district. In the Veliki Hribach stretch of woods alone no fewer than eleven formidable lines of trenches have been captured. The trees are of too young growth to stop bullets; and hidden in their trenches the Austrians could sweep the approaches at ground level, lying low behind abattis and a mass of wire entanglements. The whole aspect of the country here reminded me strangely of parts of the West Australian “bush,” with, of course, the exception that these are fir trees. Still, there was so much resemblance that it would have been as easy to lose oneself here in the dense growth as it is in the “bush.”