It was a clear, starlight night, up above the multitudinous flashes of British and Italian guns. At close quarters these flashes were blindingly bright, and flung up showers of red sparks. In the intervals of a few seconds between flashes, if one stood with one's eyes fixed on the guns, the stars seemed blotted out in an utterly black darkness. A long bombardment is one of the most boring things in the world by reason of its intense monotony, and because in a queer half-unconscious way it begins, after many hours, very slightly to fray the nerves. Listening and watching in the small hours, and from time to time directing, I found myself able, with almost discreditable elastic-mindedness, to call up at will any of the aspects of modern war,--its utter and inherent wickedness, its artistic and scientific majesty, its occasional moral justification against the oppressor, its ultimate blank insanity. But I would not have liked to be an Austrian yesterday or this morning. The Italian Infantry attacked on our sector at 5.30 a.m. There was a tremendous crescendo of gunfire at this time. The Major relieved me in the Command Post at 5 o'clock, and urged me to go to bed, but I did not feel inclined to sleep. Instead I went up about 6 o'clock through Pec village to an O.P. on a hillside beyond, to see what could be seen. But all the Front was hidden in a thick mist, made thicker by the smoke, shot through with innumerable momentary flashes. All round us thousands of guns were going off, filling the air with a deafening and continuous roar. A telephonist was with me who had been through a good deal of the Somme fighting, and had found the Italian Front, in times of lull, a little uneventful. But this morning he was full of appreciation. "This is something like it, isn't it, Sir?" he said. Being able to see nothing, I went back to bed for some hours and spent the afternoon at a Battery O.P., which had been specially arranged for this offensive, in an Italian reserve trench just off the Pec-Merna road. * * * * * The bombardment continued through the 19th and 20th and 21st of August, now with guns firing independently, now with salvos or rounds of Battery fire, now with individual guns being ranged afresh from some O.P., with hardly an hour's interval of silence. How little the individual soldier knows of what is happening at these times! Conflicting rumours of varying credibility came in to us during those three days, rumours of big advances both to the north and to the south. But on our own sector we knew that no permanent advance had been made, for we were still firing a good deal on old "Zone 15," one of our first day's targets, and on that damned Hill 464, the most important of the first objectives of the Infantry.