Firing died down about a quarter to seven, and the Brigadier came up to the O.P., very pleased with the support we had rendered, and asked that a slow rate of fire might be kept up.  Later on an Austrian telephone message was overheard, which suggested that the attack was to be renewed just before dawn, after a gas attack.  We kept on the alert, but nothing happened.  Two of our Batteries went on firing at a slow rate all night.  When dawn broke, it was evident that our bombardment had been very destructive.  The enemy’s trenches were knocked to pieces; uprooted trees, planks, sandbags and dead bodies lay about in confusion.  It was thought that owing to our fire some Austrian units, which were to have taken part in the attack, could not, and others would not, do so, in spite of a special issue of rum and other spirits.  I saw also, motionless amid the Austrian wire, a figure in Italian uniform, one of a patrol who had gone out four nights before, and had not returned.

On the 12th I went out with a Sergeant, a Signaller and Corporal Savogna, a Canadian Italian, on a Front Line Reconnaissance on the northern side of the Vippacco, in the Second Army area.  The day was wonderfully clear and we could see the everlasting snows beyond Cadore.  We went through Rupa to Merna and, being evidently spotted, were shelled with 4.2’s and forced to proceed along a muddy communication trench knee deep in water.  At Raccogliano Mill we visited the Headquarters of the Bergamo Brigade, which was holding the line.  A guide took us along the front line, which had been considerably advanced here in August and September, and again by a successful local attack a few days before.  We went down one Caverna in which, on the occasion of this last attack, a Magyar officer and 25 men surrendered.  The Austrian sentry, also a Magyar, had been fastened by the leg to the doorpost outside the entrance to the dug-out.  In the Italian bombardment one of his feet was blown away, but his own people had done nothing for him.  Now his dead body lay out in the open behind the new Italian front line.

* * * * *

On the 14th Jeune went on leave to England, no one having any expectation that anything of importance was likely to happen in the near future.  In his absence I acted as Second-in-Command of the Battery.

On the 19th we heard that the Italian High Command was preparing another big offensive from the Bainsizza against the Ternova Plateau, and the same day the Intelligence Report contained the information that a series of German Divisions had been seen detraining at Lubiana since the beginning of October, and that, owing to the Russian collapse, a thousand Austrian guns had been moved across from the Russian to the Isonzo Front since the middle of September.  We had noticed a perceptible increase in the enemy’s Artillery activity for some time, but this, we thought at the time, was purely defensive.  There had also been a week of heavy rains, but the Vippacco, after rising rapidly and threatening to flood us all out, fell eighteen inches in one night.  It swept away a number of Italian bridges, however, from Merna and Raccogliano further up stream, and we saw pieces of these rushing past in the swift current.