With British Guns in Italy: A Tribute to Italian Achievement Part 3

Venosta had a gramophone, which played most evenings after dinner on the terrace, chiefly marches and martial music and Italian opera. Italy's Libyan war, whatever else may be said of it, has produced one magnificent marching song, "A Tripoli," which deserves to live for ever.

Fine, too, even on the gramophone, are the "March of the Alpini," the "March of the Bersaglieri" and the famous "Garibaldi's Hymn." I met an English doctor once, who had heard this last played in Rome on some great occasion with some of the old Garibaldian veterans in their red shirts marching in front of the band. He had felt a lump in his throat that day, he said. When Venosta's gramophone played, the Italians encamped near by cl.u.s.tered round the edge of the terrace in obvious enjoyment, and sometimes one or two would dash indignantly down the road to stop limbers and carts, which were making a rattle on the stones.

Our Mess was a great centre for visitors, both English and Italian, we being at this time the British Battery in the most advanced and interesting position. Among our visitors, especially on Sundays, was a Chaplain, whom I will call Littleton, who used to conduct our Church Parades. In the British Army, and I believe in most others, the principle of compulsory religious observance is still intermittently enforced, when it does not interfere with the still more important business of fighting. I liked Littleton very much in many ways, but sometimes he infuriated me. He was lunching with us one day and describing how for some months in France, during some murderous fighting, he was attached to an Infantry Battalion. "I have never in my life enjoyed myself more," he said, "than during those months." I could not help asking, "What did you enjoy, seeing the poor devils getting hit?" I told him afterwards that I knew he did not really delight in spectacles of agony and bloodshed, but that "enjoy" seemed to me an unfortunate word to use.

On another occasion I attended, in the capacity of Orderly Officer for the day, one of Littleton's Church Parades and heard him preach. It was clear that he was troubled by a suspicion that the war and the details of its development had discredited in some minds some of the ideas of which he was the professional exponent. He made a brave struggle, however, against this tide of unreason. "G.o.d does not make things too easy for us," he explained, "He gives us the opportunities, and if we choose not to use them, that is our fault. A loving father sets up a tremendously high standard for his son, and judges him severely, not in spite of, but because of, his love for him. In G.o.d's sight, three or four years of war may be tremendously worth while."

Then we sang a hymn. I felt inclined to sing instead a song, written by a soldier who was wounded in France:--

"The Bishop tells us, 'when the boys come back They will not be the same; for they'll have fought In a just cause: they led the last attack On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought New right to breed an honourable race.

They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.

For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind; Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die; And Bert's gone syphilitic; you'll not find A chap who served there hasn't found _some_ change.'

And the Bishop said 'The ways of G.o.d are strange!"

It was hard for such a limited intelligence as mine, especially in this unending Italian sunshine, to imagine that it could seriously be worth while to burn down a whole real world, in order to roast a probably imaginary pig. I found it very hard to believe, with the Chaplains, that the war was purifying everyone's character, and I was particularly sceptical as regards some of the elderly non-combatants who were unable to realise at first hand "the Glory of the Great Adventure."

CHAPTER VIII

A FRONT LINE RECONNAISSANCE

Every day, in our Group, some officer carried out a Front Line Reconnaissance. This officer was chosen in rotation from the Group Headquarters and the various Batteries. Colonel Raven, our Group Commander, often carried out these Reconnaissances himself. Of all British officers at this time serving in Italy, he had, I think, the greatest understanding of the Italians. He had travelled in Italy in peace-time and had studied Italian history. He fully appreciated the difficulties against which the Italian Army had to contend, and its military achievements in spite of them. He enjoyed social intercourse with Italians, and his invariable and slightly elaborate courtesy was, in an Englishman, remarkable. For, as Mazzini once said, an Englishman's friendship, when once secured, holds very firm, but it is manifested more by deeds than by words. But Colonel Raven had the gift of sympathetic imagination, and he had also in full measure the Allied spirit.

The purpose of these Reconnaissances was twofold: first, to report on matters of military importance, any notable activity by the enemy, the direction and nature of hostile fire upon our trenches, the effects of our own fire, when not otherwise ascertainable, the precise position on the map, especially after any action, of our own and of the enemy's lines, including saps, advanced posts and the like; second, to maintain a real contact and spirit of comradeship with the Italian Infantry and to seek to give them confidence in the efficiency and prompt.i.tude of British Artillery support. Under the first head, valuable information was frequently brought back, and under the second I believe that, so far at least as our Group was concerned, the personal relations between the Artillery and the Infantry were exceptionally good. Hardly ever did we receive complaints that our guns were firing short, though such complaints are often made, and often quite groundlessly, when the Infantry lack confidence in the Artillery behind them.

At one time thin-skinned persons among us used to complain that Italians who pa.s.sed them on the roads used to call out "imboscato!"

Imboscato is a term very frankly used in the Italian army, generally though not necessarily as a term of reproach. It corresponds with the French "embusque," one who shelters in a wood, for which we in English have no precise equivalent. It is used by an Italian to indicate one who runs, or is thought to run, less risk of death than the speaker. It is chiefly used of men in the non-combatant services or in posts well behind the fighting front, including the Higher Staff and especially the junior ranks attendant on them. It is used also in jest by Italian patrols going out at night into No Man's Land, of their comrades, whom they leave behind in the front line trenches. Personally I was never called an imboscato, nor were any of my brother gunners, except once or twice when riding in side-cars or motors miles in rear of our guns. And to Infantry marching along dusty roads under an Italian sun there is something very irritating in a motor car dashing past, with its occupants reclining in easy positions, its siren hideously shrieking, and blinding dust-clouds rising in its wake.

German propaganda was insidiously active in Italy throughout the war, and spread many lying stories with the object of discrediting the British. Among these was one, the details of which do not matter now, concerning the fact that only British Artillery, and no British Infantry, had at that time been sent to Italy. Our Reconnaissances, involving our visible and daily presence among the gallant succession of Italian Brigades, who held the blood-stained line on the Carso and across the valley of the Vippacco, were the most fitting reply which we could make to German propaganda.

I made my first Front Line Reconnaissance on July 27th, two days after we had moved forward to our new Battery position. That day I visited the trenches on the Volconiac, starting in the early afternoon and getting back at nightfall. I took with me as a guide a young Italian gunner, a Neapolitan by birth, who had been a waiter in an Italian restaurant in New York before the war. He had been in the Austrian offensive of 1916 in the Trentino, where all the guns of his Battery had been lost and nearly all his comrades killed or captured.

From the Battery position we followed the road behind Hill 123, up a glorious valley, whose sides were thickly wooded with pines, gradually thinning under the destruction wrought by Austrian sh.e.l.l fire and the Italian military need for timber. The only other vegetation here was a little coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. On the lee side of Hill 123, sheltered from Austrian fire, was a whole village of wooden huts, admirably constructed, capable of housing several Battalions. At the head of the valley, the road, a good example of the war work of the Italian Engineers, turned sharply up the hillside, securing tolerable gradients by means of constant zigzags--tolerable that is to say for men on foot and for pack mules, for wheeled transport could not proceed beyond this point. It was a steep climb and I perspired most visibly right through my thin tunic. Three-quarters of the way up we stopped and got a drink of water from the Infantrymen in charge of the water barrels. There are no springs or streams on the Volconiac or on Dosso Faiti. All water has to be pumped up from below through pipes, and at the point where we rested, water barrels were being continually filled from the pipes and then hauled on by hand, on sleighs, for the remainder of the ascent.

Water was also carried up from this point by individual soldiers in the fiaschi, or gla.s.s bottles encased in plaited straw, in which Italian wine is sold.

Just below the crest we entered the trenches, which were held at this time by the Florence Brigade. The construction of these trenches was very interesting. They were all blasted in the rock, and many drilling machines were at work as I pa.s.sed along them, increasing the number of _caverne_, or dug-outs, and deepening those already in existence. Here and there, where the trenches were rather shallow, they were built up with loose rocks and sandbags filled with stones.

One of my objects was to get a view of the Austrian trenches and barbed wire on the Tamburo, in order to observe from closer quarters than was possible from any of our O.P.'s the effects of our recent bombardments, and to verify or disprove a report that certain new defensive works were being constructed by the enemy at night. Our own trenches here were on a higher level than the enemy's, and the bottom of the valley between the Tamburo and this part of the Volconiac was in No Man's Land, as was a relatively short slope on the Tamburo and a relatively long slope on the Volconiac. The latter slope was very steep, but thickly clothed with pines, most of which were now shattered by sh.e.l.l fire into mere dead stumps. Even these stumps, however, made it difficult to get an uninterrupted view of the Tamburo, and I had to go some miles along the trenches, gazing through numerous peepholes, before I reached a point from which I could satisfy myself that our bombardments had been effective and that the reported new works were indeed real. Having got this information, I smoked a pipe and talked with an Italian company commander in a rocky dug-out, and then started to return.

Things were quiet on this sector of the Front that afternoon, though Italian Field Guns were bursting shrapnel from time to time over the Tamburo. As I went along the trenches I was several times greeted by Italians who had been in America, "Hullo, John! How are you? How d'you like this dam country?" This type brings back with it across the Atlantic the frank, almost brutal, familiarity of a new and democratic civilisation. It contrasts oddly with the quieter ways of those Italians who have lived all their lives in Italy, amid one of the oldest and most mature civilisations of the world.

On our way down the hill we pa.s.sed a seemingly endless string of pack mules coming up, laden with food and ammunition. Always at evening this wonderful system of supply was visibly working, triumphing over tremendous natural difficulties. We pa.s.sed, too, a party of about fifty men hauling up on long ropes a heavy drilling engine, the sort of labour of which British fatigue parties have, luckily for themselves, no experience. Mists came down from the mountains as we descended, and rainstorms threatened, but did not break.

CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING AT GORIZIA

On the first day in August I had been doing some observation at S.

Andrea in the afternoon, and, this duty over, I got permission to walk into Gorizia and visit the section of the British Red Cross stationed there, several of whose members I knew. It is a longer walk than one would think, for S. Andrea is practically a southern suburb of Gorizia, which, however, straggles over a large area of country. The railway bridge across the Isonzo is broken down by sh.e.l.l fire and so are two other bridges,--all three of stone,--but these could be soon repaired, if we made a big advance. It would be wasted labour to repair them now, for the Austrians would only break them down again. The Italians have run up a low, broad wooden bridge, sheltered from Austrian view behind one of the broken stone bridges. From time to time the Austrians. .h.i.t this bridge, and then the Italians quickly make it good again. To be able to cross the Isonzo at this point is a convenience, but not a military necessity, for all movement of troops and supplies into Gorizia can be carried out on the left bank of the river and across bridges some miles further down-stream.

The suburbs of the town were badly knocked about, but the centre was not at this time much damaged. Gorizia lies in a salient of the hills, with the Austrians looking down upon it from the tops of most of them. But, still hoping to win it back, they do not sh.e.l.l it heavily or often.

There are special reasons, too, for their forbearance. For Gorizia is a sort of Austrian Cheltenham, whither Austrian officers retire in large numbers to pa.s.s their last years in villas which they take over from one another's widows. So the Austrian officer cla.s.s has a sort of vested interest in the preservation of the place. So also have certain Hebrew Banks in Vienna, which hold mortgages on a great part of the land in and around the city, which just before the war was being rapidly developed as a fashionable Spa. It is a well laid out town, with large public gardens and good buildings, architecturally very like the larger Italian towns on the other side of the old frontier, Udine for example, but with a certain element of a heavier and more _rococo_ style, the Viennese.

There is still a fairly large civilian population in the town, and one restaurant still keeps open.

I found the British Red Cross in the Via Ponte Isonzo, in what had once been a big boarding-house, with a large untidy garden behind. Most of those stationed there were motor ambulance drivers, about twenty in number, some too old to fight, some rejected for health, some Quakers, unwilling to kill, but willing to risk their own lives on behalf of the wounded, others again boys under military age, who go, as soon as they can, to the Navy or the Flying Corps. It is brave and nervous work they do, driving ambulances in the dark, without lights and under fire.

After dinner I sat out in the garden in the twilight and talked with an old acquaintance of mine, who has had a large share in the organisation and daily work of the British Red Cross in Italy. The Italians, he said, are really beginning to feel their feet, as a united nation, in this war. Men of all cla.s.ses from all parts of Italy are meeting and mixing with one another as they have never done before, and the old _regionalismo_ is being rapidly undermined. He himself has almost ceased to think critically of the past or speculatively of the future, but just lives and works in the present. As to the state of the world after the war, he is very confident, provided we go on fighting long enough.

Nothing that happens at home is of great importance, all the pressure is on the Fronts. Everything is looking now in the direction of democracy.

Even Russia, in the long run unconquerable, has got her good out of the war already, whatever miseries and transitory anarchy she may have yet to undergo. In England and elsewhere many of the present political leaders are vile, but we shall all know what we want the world to look like, and to _be_ like, after the war, and new leaders will arise and lead us. When the survivors of our smitten generation have grown old, there must be a peace of hearts, as well as a peace of arms, between the young of all lands. But our generation can never make personal friendships again with Germans, seeing that they have killed nearly all those who mattered most to us, and that we have to spend the rest of our lives without them.

He motored me back to the Vippacco bridge at Rubbia. When next I heard of him it was a month later at the height of the Italian offensive. He had been severely wounded on the Bainsizza Plateau.

The British Red Cross did splendid work in Italy and made a big contribution to Anglo-Italian friendship and understanding. They began their operations in Italy in September 1915, and were thus the first Englishmen to "show the flag" on the Italian Front. Thousands of Italians will gratefully and affectionately remember them till the end of their lives. More even than the British fighting troops who came after them, the British Red Cross will remain a historic legend in Italy in the days to come.

CHAPTER X

A CEMETERY AT VERSA

I was at Versa, as I have already said, from the 2nd to the 10th of August, to supervise a party working on the hospital. I walked one evening down the village street, where in the light of the sunset an Italian military band was playing to a mixed crowd of soldiers and civilians. Just outside the village I came to the gates of a cemetery, where six tall cypresses stand like sentinels on guard over the graves of many hundreds of Italian dead. This was at first a civilian graveyard, but all the dead have Italian names, except one Kirschner, and even he was called Giuseppe and has an Italian inscription on his tombstone. For this is Italia Redenta, in this one little corner of which a great company of Italian youth have already laid down their lives. And now the graves, in long straight rows, have filled one newly added field, and begun to flow across a second, and soon from the Field Hospitals in the village more dead will come.

Here, as in our war graveyards in France, no religious dogma or supernatural hope intrudes upon the little wooden crosses. On these, for the most part, you can read only the bare conventional attributes of each little handful of dust, which has pa.s.sed through its quivering agony into the still sleep of decay,--its name and regiment, its civilian home, the place and date of its death. A few have more than this. Here lie the two brothers Bellina in one grave, with a cross at their head and another, rougher and larger, at their feet, announcing simply, "I due fratelli," "the two brothers." And here is a tombstone engraved with an anchor, for one who, very early in the war, was. .h.i.t while fording the Isonzo in face of the enemy's fire. "Al Pontiere Guazzaro Giuseppe che valorosamente sfidando le infide acque dell'

Isonzo cadeva colpito dal piombo nemico. 25 Giugno 1915."[1] And here is another inscription, typical of that Latin sense of comradeship, which is more articulate, though not necessarily more profound, than ours.

"Sottotenente Arcangeli Antonio, con commossa memoria," the officers of his Battery, "il loro orgoglio infinite qu eternano." "In deeply moved remembrance they here place upon eternal record their infinite pride in him." It is poor stuff in English, but a vivid and quite natural tribute in Italian.

[Footnote 1: "To the Sapper Giuseppe Guazzaro, who fell, while bravely defying the treacherous waters of the Isonzo, struck down by an enemy bullet, 25th June, 1915."]

Where the sun went down, the sky was a sea of rose red and golden green, studded with little long islands of dark cloud, and on the edge of this sea the evening star twinkled like a tiny illumined boat, dancing, a blaze of light, upon the waves. To left and right the cloudbanks were a deep purple blue, fast fading into the dim warm grey of an Italian night. East and north the mountains that bound the plain, silent witnesses of Italy's great struggle, were hidden in the dusk, and the cypress sentinels stood up sharp and black against the darkening sky.

The band had ceased to play and one heard only the chirp of gra.s.shoppers, and across an orchard the soft sound of Italian speech, and the distant song of two soldiers in the village street. But the warm air, which just now was throbbing with a military march, seemed to be throbbing still with an aching longing that happier days may come swiftly to this land of beauty and pain, so that the sacrifice of all these dead shall not be wholly waste.

Not many miles away, as the sun was setting, an Austrian sh.e.l.l burst in a British Battery, and three hours later through the dark under faint stars an ambulance lorry brought to us the bodies of four British gunners, whose dust will mingle with Italian dust, under Italian skies, for ever.

CHAPTER XI

UDINE