Why, I kept asking myself, didn’t the fools shell Pec village, where a crowd of men and guns were waiting for transport?  Why didn’t they put over gas shell?  Why didn’t they bomb us?  Evidently there were no Germans here!  About a quarter to nine No. 2 finished her ammunition, and we pulled her out.  The other three guns had gone now and the other two British Batteries were clear, all but two lorries.  Just after nine o’clock our last tractor came along and took off No. 2, with Darrell in charge of her.  How the Italians had managed to get all these lorries and tractors for us, I don’t know, for, in the Third Army as a whole, they were terribly short of transport.  Many made the criticism that we should have kept out in Italy our own transport.  But the Italians certainly did us very handsomely, at the cost of losing some bigger guns of their own.

After the last British gun had ceased to fire there was for about five minutes an eerie stillness, as though all our Artillery had gone and theirs was holding its fire.  And then an Italian Field Battery opened again on the right of Pec.  For over an hour now I had been expecting, minute by minute, to see the enemy Infantry come swarming along the Nad Logem in the dusk, cutting off our retreat, for I knew we had nothing but rear-guards left up there.  But they did not come!

Only the Major and I and about forty men were left now, and we had been told that there would be no more transport.  So we destroyed everything that we had been unable to get away, and the Major informed Headquarters of the situation and then disconnected the telephone and the men fell in and we marched away.  We were just in time to see an Italian Field Battery come into Pec at the gallop, the gunners all cheering, unlimber their guns, take up position and open fire.  It was a smart piece of work, done with a real Latin gesture.  How enfuriating it was to be leaving these wooden huts of ours and these good positions, on which had been spent so many hours of labour, where we could have passed such a comfortable winter, going forth now none knew whither!  Old Natale, one of the Italians attached to us, chalked up in German on the entrance to one of the huts, “You German pigs, we shall soon be back again!” But at that moment I did not feel so sure.  Natale was afterwards lost in the retreat, and was reported by us as “missing.”  But one of our men saw him again six months later with an Italian Battery and said he looked several years younger!

We passed Campbell, the Medical Officer, standing outside his dug-out on the road.  He was waiting for the last of the other Batteries’ parties to get away.  He told me afterwards that we were out only just in time.  Within half an hour of our going, the Austrians fairly plastered the position with shells of all calibres.  They shelled the road a little as we went along, but not too much.  As we passed the railway embankment at Rubbia, we saw and spoke to some Italian machine-gunners in position, whose orders were to hold up the enemy till the last possible moment.  They were quite calm and determined, those boys, knowing perfectly well that, by the time the enemy came, the Isonzo bridges would have been blown up behind them.  I dragged myself on with an aching heart.  One who retreats cuts a poor figure beside a rear-guard that stays behind and fights.