Others, more fixed, liberated in their own villages, were eager to talk and to welcome us, but a little lost with the British and their unfamiliar ways and language, full of tales of the lack of food under the Austrian occupation, and the robbery of all their livestock and metal and many other things.  But the retreat hereabouts had been too rapid and involuntary for deliberate burning or destruction or trap-setting on an appreciable scale....

That night I made my headquarters in a wrecked church, from the tower of which I sent back signals in the morse code by means of a lamp.  I slept for an hour or two under an Austrian blanket, none too clean as it afterwards appeared, and drank Austrian coffee and ate Austrian biscuits....

All through that day and night and the day following the cannonading continued, but with very variable intensity at different points and times.  Sometimes a tremendous affair, heavies, field guns and trench mortars all pounding away together, creeping barrage, smoke screens and the rest of it.  Elsewhere and at other times, nothing, Infantry well ahead of the guns, going forward almost into the blue, with nothing heavier than machine guns to support them.

British Cavalry went through in the dawn, spectral, artistically perfect, aiming at ambitious, distant objectives, Northamptonshire Yeomanry who had come from France to Italy a year ago and had been kept behind the lines all through the war and were having their first show at last.  The next day they suffered many casualties, but they did fine work.  Their reconnaissance officer came into the church soon after midnight and asked me if the Austrians still held any part of the village.  I told him no, not since yesterday morning.

Later on in the morning great masses of Infantry moved up through the village; British Infantry with a look of evident satisfaction in their faces, but unemotional; Italian Infantry, looking usually even less expressive, but ready to burst into electrical enthusiasm at a touch, at a word, at a sign....  A British General, all smiles, rode past on his horse and stopped to ask me a question or two.  He tapped me playfully on the helmet with his riding crop.  “When will you get your guns across the river?” he asked.  “As soon, Sir, as the Sappers can build a bridge that will carry them,” I replied....

Now and again Italian planes going on, or coming back from, raids and reconnaissances, flying very low over our heads, the pilots waving their hands over the side and cheering, the troops on the roads cheering back and upwards in return....

When I was relieved, I tramped back to the Piave, many miles now, and wading those of the channels that were still unbridged returned, tired and footsore but with a song in my heart, to my Battery.

* * * * *

Not till later did we come to comprehend the vast sweep and the triumphantly executed plan of this Last Great Battle.[1]