Our officers' Mess and sleeping huts were about two hundred yards from the guns and a little higher up the hill, just above one of the magnificent newly-made Italian war roads, along which supplies went up to Hills 123 and 126 and the Volconiac and Dosso Faiti. Just outside our huts and opening on to the road was a broad, natural terrace, with a fine view backwards over the plain. Several times, during our first week in this position, the Austrians shelled a British Battery at Rupa about a mile in rear of us and an Italian Battery alongside it. It was very hot and dry and they had been given away by the huge clouds of dust raised by the blast of their guns firing. The Austrians shelled them with twelve-inch and nine-four-fives, getting magnificent shell bursts, which some of us photographed, great columns of brown-black smoke, rising mountains high, in the shape of Prince of Wales' feathers, and hanging for about ten minutes in the still air. But very little damage was done, and after a short interval both Batteries opened fire again. From this terrace of ours we had fine views of fighting in the air. On August 2nd we saw an Austrian plane brought down by two Italians, who dived down upon him from above, firing at him with machine guns as they swept past him. The Austrian, who was flying high, gradually seemed to lose his head and hesitate in what direction to fly, then he began to turn over and over, recovered for a moment, but finally lost all control and came down nose first into his own trenches, just across the river. Another evening, about ten o'clock, a whole squadron of Austrian planes came over, flying in regular formation and signalling to one another with Morse lamps. They were going, it appeared, to bomb Gradisca. They were heavily shelled by the "archies" as they came over us, and several fragments of shell fell on our terrace. The night sky was full of starry shell-bursts, and a dozen of our searchlights fussily got busy. Then suddenly all our artillery, as it seemed, began to go off, and for about five minutes there was a deafening burst of fire from guns of all calibres. And then all grew suddenly quiet again. Perhaps it was a raid, perhaps only the fear of one.