‘We then started to return. The moon had now sunk. The gaps in the Iron Bridge had opened farther. The traffic was all from the other bank, and the munition carts were all successively breaking through and necessitating lengthy rescue operations. It was fully an hour before I secured passage for the touring car. Sessions then returned with me to drive the Ford Ambulance. Another hour passed before he could be started. I left him half-way across, and returned to fetch the other cars. On recrossing I found the Ford with one wheel through. Sessions’ coolness and the car’s lightness enabled us to extract the latter and its load. It was then clear that passage for a wider car had now become impossible. On our return on foot we saw that another portion of one of the narrow galleries had opened out (the footway separating from the roadway), carrying with it a mule. No course lay open but to leave the heavier cars, with their wounded, on the Gorizia side, and to try to get the others back to Vallisella, returning later with another car to which the wounded could be carried across the bridge. The night was cold, and we left all available coats, &c., to cover the wounded in their long wait. The drivers accepted the situation with the coolness one could expect from them. ‘On reaching the Italian side again we found a block, three carts wide, extending back almost to Lucinico. We were forced to abandon, therefore, the remaining Ford Ambulance, for which it proved impossible to make a passage. After a few hundred yards of slow progress in the block, the touring car fell over the side of the road into a shell hole. It was extricated, but a few yards further the block became impracticable. We left it, half in a trench, and walked to Vallisella. On the way we met our two remaining cars, loaded with the material of the hospitals to which we were attached, also completely locked in the block. ‘At Vallisella we filled rucksacks with food and thermos, and with our adjutant, Kennedy, to help, trudged back for the bridge. Fortunately, our tramp-like appearance only led to one “hold-up” in the kindly darkness. ‘My anxiety to return was emphasised by the certainty that the Austrians would begin shelling the bridge as soon as daylight revealed the block. Day broke as we approached it. The risk had also appealed to the drivers, and we met the lorries, cars, &c., all breaking out of the jam and racing for the cover of Lucinico. Glaisyer was able to move off just as we reached him. The two cars that were still on the near side got down to the protection of the Galleria with their hospital staff.