Meanwhile all the telephone lines had gone owing to the shelling, cutting us off from Brigade, other Batteries and O.P.’s.  But intermittent communication was maintained by runners, and signallers were out, hour after hour, mending breaks in the line and showing their invariable gallantry.  Till about six o’clock our orders were to lie low, to keep under cover and not to open fire.  The rain of shells continued without slackening.  We were wonderfully lucky to get off as lightly as we did.  It is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of war, how many shells can fall in a position of no great size, and yet do very little damage.  It was estimated, and I think quite soberly, that at least two thousand rounds were pumped into our Battery position that morning.

It was soon after six that we got orders, passed along from the next Battery up the road, to open fire on our “counter-preparation target.”  This was a sign that the advance of the Austrian Infantry had either begun, or was thought to be imminent.  They attacked, in fact, about a quarter to seven on our sector.  Their synchronising was faulty, as between the different sectors attacked.  Some went forward earlier and others later than had been intended.  They were all newly equipped and were carrying full packs and blankets on their backs.  They had been told by their officers that this was to be the last great offensive of the war, that they were going to drive us headlong down the mountain side, that after two days they would be in Verona, and after ten days in Rome.  They were not told that they had British troops in front of them.  They came forward bravely and with great determination, in five successive waves.

On the British left Divisional Front, to the west of us, they gained a large initial success, and pushed us back well behind our first line of guns.  Here for some time the situation looked serious.  But next day strong counter-attacks by British and Italian troops restored the line, our lost guns were retaken and the retreating Austrians suffered great slaughter and demoralisation.

On the British right Divisional Front, in support of which our Brigade was operating, the British 23rd Division fought a fight worthy of their high reputation.  Forced back for a while from their front line trenches, after a prolonged and intense bombardment and by an overwhelming superiority of numbers, they never even fell back to their support line.  But, turning on the enemy who was advancing along and astride the San Sisto road, they drove him back and re-established their own front line within six hours of the first attack.  It was here that a boy Colonel, a Sherwood Forester scarcely twenty-one years old, won the V.C. and fell severely wounded.  When things looked black, he had organised the defence and the subsequent counter-attack, collecting together British Infantrymen of several Battalions, together with British Artillerymen and Italian Machine-Gunners and Engineers, welding them into a coherent force and making swift, yet well thought out, dispositions which did much to save the situation.