Many red rockets went up in the early evening from Volconiac and Faiti.  The enemy were making another attack.  Then a little later tricolour rockets, red, white and green, went up.  This was the signal that the attack had been beaten off and that the situation was quiet again.  The firing died down about seven.  We fed and put up for the night an Italian officer, whose Battery used to be here, but had moved north yesterday.  He had just come back from a gas course at Palmanova.  From a newspaper which he had I saw that a strong offensive had begun on the afternoon of the 23rd to the north of the Bainsizza Plateau.  Either the attacks here were only holding attacks, or the attack to the north was a feint and the real thing was to be here.  Anyhow, I thought, it is their Last Despairing Great Cry!  I turned in just after midnight.  The night was still and there was a bright moon and stars.  A thick mist lay along the Vippacco, just behind the trees.  The air was damp and cold.  It seemed pretty quiet for the moment all along the Front.

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I had a troubled night.  In the early morning we were bombarded with gas shell and had to wear respirators from a quarter to three till four o’clock.  We were firing from five till six and again steadily from a quarter past seven onwards.  We got orders to move back that night to Boschini, on San Michele.  I thought this a great mistake.  Later in the day our move was cancelled, as the two forward Batteries which pulled out last night would not be in action on San Michele till to-morrow.  They had been last heard of stuck fast in a crush of traffic at the bottom of the hill at Peteano.  A strong team of horses were straining their guts out in vain attempts to pull an Italian twelve-inch mortar up the hill.  It was this which had caused the block.  Those two forward Batteries might have lost their guns in a quick retreat, I thought, but hardly we.  It seemed to be feared, however, that the two bridges across the Vippacco might go.

That day we were shelled heavily with every kind of weapon, from fifteen-inch downwards, especially the Left Section in the afternoon.  We had, as usual, marvellously good luck, and only had one casualty, and that a slight wound.  The spirit and endurance of the men were wonderful.  Enemy planes were over all day; we counted twenty-two between daybreak and four p.m.  Some hovered overhead and ranged their guns on us.  Several times we put our detachments under cover and ceased fire owing to the shelling.  My own gun was half buried by a great shower of earth kicked up by a 9.45, which pitched right on top of the bank in front of us.  But Cotes, my Sergeant, and myself, crouching under cover of the girdles, were quite unhurt.  The rest of the detachment had been ordered down into their dug-out.  Another time the enemy neatly bracketed our Command Post with twelve-inch, and several of us within were uncomfortably awaiting the next round.  But luckily for us he switched away to the right.