* * * * *

This new position of ours was only three hundred yards from the Austrians, though we had between us and them the river Vippacco and a high hill, a spur of that on which the ruined monastery of S. Grado di Merna stood.  The trenches here ran on either side of the Vippacco.  An Italian Trench Mortar Battery had been here before us and, it was said, had been shelled out.  But our gun pits, blasted out of the hillside, were almost completely protected against hostile fire, except perhaps from guns on S. Marco, which might, with a combination of good luck and good shooting, have got us in enfilade.  Only howitzers capable of employing high-angle fire could usefully occupy such a position, and, as it was, our shells could not clear the crest except at pretty large elevations.  It resulted that we could not hit any targets within a considerable distance of the Austrian front line, but this, we were told, did not matter.  We were here, we were informed, “for a special purpose” and for action against distant targets only.  There was an orchard on the flat just behind our guns, a little oasis of fertility in that barren land, and wooden crosses marking the graves of some of the Italian Trench Mortar Gunners, who had preceded us.

Italian Field Artillery were in position all around us, and were firing a good deal by night.  For the first few nights, with their guns popping off all round, and with blasting operations in full swing, an almost continuous echo travelled round and round the stony hillsides and made me dream that I was sleeping beside a stormy sea breaking in endless waves on a rocky coast.  Blasting was going on all day and all night in this neighbourhood.  One of our officers was walking one morning on the back of the Carso, out of view of the enemy and anticipating no danger, save the stray shell which is always and everywhere a possibility in the war zone, when suddenly the face of an Italian bobbed up from behind a rock with the warning, in English, “Now shoots the mine!” and disappeared again.  The Englishman ran for his life and took shelter behind the same rock, and a few seconds later there was a heavy explosion, filling the air with flying fragments, unpleasantly jagged.

Our officers’ Mess and sleeping huts were about two hundred yards from the guns and a little higher up the hill, just above one of the magnificent newly-made Italian war roads, along which supplies went up to Hills 123 and 126 and the Volconiac and Dosso Faiti.  Just outside our huts and opening on to the road was a broad, natural terrace, with a fine view backwards over the plain.  Several times, during our first week in this position, the Austrians shelled a British Battery at Rupa about a mile in rear of us and an Italian Battery alongside it.  It was very hot and dry and they had been given away by the huge clouds of dust raised by the blast of their guns firing.  The Austrians shelled them with twelve-inch and nine-four-fives, getting magnificent shell bursts, which some of us photographed, great columns of brown-black smoke, rising mountains high, in the shape of Prince of Wales’ feathers, and hanging for about ten minutes in the still air.  But very little damage was done, and after a short interval both Batteries opened fire again.