[Footnote 1:  “Big William.”]

[Footnote 2:  “Wretched little Charles.”]

[Footnote 3:  This common boast of the Rumanians is quite true.  It is partly to be accounted for by the fact that they were able to retreat before successive invading hordes of barbarians into the inaccessible valleys of the Carpathians, and come down again on to the plains when the danger had passed by.]

* * * * *

From Mestre we moved up through Treviso to a Battery position, on which an advance party had been at work for several days.  It grew more and more certain that the offensive was coming at last.  Troops of all arms were moving forward in unending streams along every road leading toward the Piave.  Prominent among them were many Italian Engineers and bridging detachments with great numbers of pontoons.  Beyond Treviso all troop movements took place at night, and our defensive (and offensive) measures against aircraft were apparently sufficient to prevent the enemy from getting any clear idea of what was going on.  It seems that he expected an attack in the mountains, but not on the plain.  The Italian High Command, on the other hand, considered that the relative strength and morale of the opposing Armies was now such that we could attack on the plain without fear of a successful counter-attack in the mountains, and that, the attack on the plain once well under way, we could pass to the offensive in the mountains also.  This view of things was justified by the events which followed.  Two British Divisions were moved down to the plain, and one was left in the mountains.  The Heavy Artillery was divided proportionately and, of my own Brigade, one Battery was left in the mountains but the rest moved down.

Our new Battery position lay between the ruined village of Lovadina and the river Piave, about three-quarters of a mile from the nearer bank.  There was a farmhouse, not much knocked about, close to the gun pits and, with the aid of a few tents erected out of sight along a shallow ditch, the whole Battery was very tolerably billeted.  Another British Battery was less than a hundred yards in rear of us, and two others not far away on our right flank.  We were once more in a land of acacia hedges, beginning now to take on their autumn tints.  For miles round us the country was dead flat.  Beyond the river we could see, on a little rise, what was left of Susegana Castle, near to Conegliano, and on a higher, longer ridge further away the white campanile of San Daniele del Friuli, above Udine.  It was there that, almost a year ago, in the first newspaper I saw after the retreat, I had read that Italian rearguards were still fighting.  In the far distance rose great mountain masses.  Up there were Feltre and Belluno, and behind, just visible when the light was very bright, the peaks of Carnia and the Cadore.