With British Guns in Italy: A Tribute to Italian AchievementDalton, Hugh Dalton, Baron
History
With British Guns in Italy: A Tribute to Italian Achievement
Dalton, Hugh Dalton, Baron
World War, 1914-1918 -- Italy
Many red rockets went up in the early evening from Volconiac and Faiti.
The enemy were making another attack. Then a little later tricolour
rockets, red, white and green, went up. This was the signal that the
attack had been beaten off and that the situation was quiet again. The
firing died down about seven. We fed and put up for the night an Italian
officer, whose Battery used to be here, but had moved north yesterday.
He had just come back from a gas course at Palmanova. From a newspaper
which he had I saw that a strong offensive had begun on the afternoon of
the 23rd to the north of the Bainsizza Plateau. Either the attacks here
were only holding attacks, or the attack to the north was a feint and
the real thing was to be here. Anyhow, I thought, it is their Last
Despairing Great Cry! I turned in just after midnight. The night was
still and there was a bright moon and stars. A thick mist lay along the
Vippacco, just behind the trees. The air was damp and cold. It seemed
pretty quiet for the moment all along the Front.
* * * * *
I had a troubled night. In the early morning we were bombarded with gas
shell and had to wear respirators from a quarter to three till four
o'clock. We were firing from five till six and again steadily from a
quarter past seven onwards. We got orders to move back that night to
Boschini, on San Michele. I thought this a great mistake. Later in the
day our move was cancelled, as the two forward Batteries which pulled
out last night would not be in action on San Michele till to-morrow.
They had been last heard of stuck fast in a crush of traffic at the
bottom of the hill at Peteano. A strong team of horses were straining
their guts out in vain attempts to pull an Italian twelve-inch mortar up
the hill. It was this which had caused the block. Those two forward
Batteries _might_ have lost their guns in a quick retreat, I thought,
but hardly we. It seemed to be feared, however, that the two bridges
across the Vippacco might go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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