But we did not remain there long.  The idea of a mobile Artillery of manoeuvre was much talked of at this time, and early in July a Brigade consisting of three British Siege Batteries, my own included, was moved westwards up into the Trentino.  We travelled all the way by road, through Verona up to Brescia, “the eagle that looks over Lombardy,” and thence beside Lake Idro, up the Val Chiese, past Storo into the Val D’Ampola.

All this last stretch of country is famous in Italian history as the scene of Garibaldi’s campaign of 1866, which, had it not been interrupted by the course of events elsewhere, would probably have hastened the liberation of Trento by more than half a century, and greatly modified the problems of Italian policy in recent years.  The story is well known of the recall of Garibaldi, which reached him at the moment of victory at Bezzecca, and of his famous reply, a model of laconic self-discipline, in the one word “Ubbidisco”—­“I obey.”  The little town of Bezzecca lay this July behind the Italian lines, but in full view and easy range of the Austrians.  A company of Arditi was billeted here, with whom I lunched one day, returning from a front line reconnaissance.  The Piazza had been renamed by the Italians “Piazza Ubbidisco,” and under cover of darkness they set up one night on the mountain side just above the town a memorial stone to Garibaldi and his volunteers of 1866, a provocative target for Austrian gunners.

No other British troops, except these three Batteries of ours, ever fought in the Trentino.  It was a proud distinction and a very memorable experience.  The natural scenery was superb, a series of great mountain ranges, uneven lines of jagged peaks, enclosing deep cut valleys, the lower slopes of the mountains densely wooded, the higher levels bare precipitous rock.  The Austrian front line ran along one ridge of peaks and ours along another; between ran a deep valley, all No Man’s Land, into which patrols used to climb down at night, often with the aid of ropes.  One mountain mass, a continuation of Cima d’Oro, was partly in our possession and partly in theirs, and up there by night among the rocks patrols grappled for the mastery, poised high above the world, and in these struggles men sometimes slipped, or were thrown, to crash to death thousands of feet below in the Val di Ledro.

This country was Austrian before the war, though inhabited wholly by Italians, and Italian troops had conquered it with extraordinary feats of endurance and daring in their first great onrush all along their old frontiers in the spring of 1915.  But now a big advance here by either side, in the face of carefully prepared opposition, seemed almost inconceivable, except as the result of some wide turning movement, hinging on some point many miles away.