The bright moon hung in a pale-green sky, looking down on a dozen roads each crawling like a black snake with the close press of retreating troops. As I was making my way back to Gradisca the whole firmament leaped into sudden brilliance and every feature in every face among the throngs around me on the road stood out for several seconds under a ghastly light. Then followed from behind Monte Michele, a deep, rolling roar. It was the first of the explosions of the great abandoned stores of gun-ammunition behind the front. From then till dawn the night sky was continually breaking into a glare like that of gigantic sunset, and the crash of destroyed artillery ammunition shook the ground. The less brilliant, but steadier, glow of burning stores and sheds and houses was constantly multiplied, and the flash of every new explosion revealed fresh masses of black smoke rising in sharp outline against the lurid horizon. It was an apocalyptic spectacle; nothing short of a volcanic eruption could produce those tremendous effects of infernal illumination. Millions of pounds' worth of material, all the fruits of two and a half years of labor, were burned and blasted out of existence in a few hours. [Sidenote: The necessity for speed.] [Sidenote: Valuable stores abandoned for lack of lorries.] The difficulty that complicated the Italian evacuation of their war-zone was the fact that every hour the need for speed became more urgent, if utter disaster was to be averted. A unit would be given twelve hours to get to the point on the railway where it was to entrain and then an hour later its time-limit would be reduced to two hours. A headquarters might be told that a sufficient supply of motor-lorries would be available to evacuate all its material and that it had better begin getting rid of chairs and tables and its superfluous stuff at once, but no sooner had these less important stores gone than word would come that no more transport was available and that all the immensely valuable stores and reserves of ammunition that still remained, must be abandoned, as no lorries could be found for them. [Sidenote: Difficulties in a sudden retreat.] [Sidenote: Every officer tries to save his supplies.]