I looked wrathfully at my questioner. “I ask how you can doubt it! If our soldiers succeed in resisting this offensive, the entire situation which is now in favor of the enemy will change completely in our favor. Soon the balance in France will again become even by the intervention of the first American units, and the Germans, who will not have been able to accomplish at once a decisive move, will find themselves in a precarious position. On our front I assure you, if the Austrians hit a snag in this offensive, that no one will be able to hold us back from dealing the final blow which will send the Austrians and Germans flying forever. But meanwhile we must see that the doors to our house are securely fastened so that thieves cannot enter.” Bottecchia was on watch outside to see that no suspicious person approached. If he imitated the cackling of a hen it would indicate that some danger threatened us. “Excuse my indiscretion, pardon me if I detain you awhile longer, but I would rather clear up everything at once than have to send for you some other time. During these first days I intend to stay in this wood, especially since on the day of the offensive it will be necessary for someone to be here always, to gather the information which might come from various sources, so as to co-ordinate it and communicate it at once to the other side. However, later, I intend to wander about, I intend to find out with my own eyes what is happening. You who have so much to do with the headquarters at Tappa di Vittorio, where I know they issue papers authorizing one to remain in this territory and legitimization papers, ought to try to get for us some document which would enable us to move about with greater ease. I do not mean to say that these documents can be of great importance; rather, if they were demanded and examined by someone truly competent, they might be serious evidence against us, but instead, they can be used to show to the soldiers or to fool some stupid Croatian gendarme who is easily satisfied so long as he sees the seal with the bicipital eagle, and would never suspect any fraud in it. For bureaucracy, as you well know, itself supplies the weapons which may prove fatal to it. We, who could not wander about without papers, will find in our spurious papers a safe protection against the stupid; we will make the papers which ought to denounce us, our accomplices. I want to tell you a plan I have in mind and which we may be able to use with the help of a legitimization paper. A servant of mine, classified as not fit for military service, who is a little older than myself and whom I can readily resemble in my present outfit, escaped to the other side before the retreat. I should want to take his name and say that at the time of Caporetto I was far from the villa of my master, where I had left my classification papers, and when I returned to the villa I found everything upside down and could not find the precious documents, so that the Austrian