We crossed the Isonzo at Peteano, and took a short cut across the fields to Farra.  In the crowd and the dark we were jostled by some Italian Infantry.  We hailed them and found that they were our old friends, the Lecce Brigade.  The Major made our men stand back.  “Pass, Lecce,” he said.  “Good luck to you!” We marched on through Farra to Gradisca, both blazing in the night.  The towns and villages everywhere in this sector had been deliberately fired by the retreating Italians, in addition to the ammunition dumps.  The whole countryside was blazing and exploding.  I thought of Russia in 1812, and the Russian retreat before Napoleon, and Tchaikovsky’s music.

It began to rain, but that made no difference to the burning.  In Gradisca burning petrol was running about the streets.  Earlier in the evening there had been a queer scene here.  The Headquarters of the British Staff had been at Gradisca, and the Camp Commandant had made a hobby of fattening rabbits for the General’s Mess.  When the time had come that day to pack up and go, it was found that the lorries provided were fully loaded with office stores, Staff officers’ bulky kit and 20,000 cigarettes, which the General was specially proud of having saved from his canteen.  There was no room for the Camp Commandant’s rabbit hutches, so these were opened and the fat inmates released, to the delight of the civilians and Italian soldiery in Gradisca, who knocked them over or shot them as they ran.  I heard this from a gunner, who was officer’s servant to one of the Staff and witnessed the scene.

A few miles away, at the Ordnance Depot at Villa Freifeldt, thousands of pounds’ worth of gun stores stood ready, packed in crates, to be removed.  But no transport came for them, and they were abandoned and fell into Austrian hands.  For lack of them, our Batteries were afterwards kept out of action for several weeks.  Whoever ordered these things seems to have thought it more important to save the Staff’s kit and the General’s cigarettes.

Just before we entered Gradisca, we passed a Battalion of the Granatieri, the Italian Grenadiers, all six foot tall, with collar badges of crimson and white, coming up from reserve to fight a rear-guard action.  I had seen them a few days before in rest billets and admired their appearance.  And in their march that night and in their faces was scorn for fugitives and contempt for death.  The Major said to me, as they swung past us, that that Battalion could be trusted to fight to the end.  And they did.  Some of our men met a few of their survivors at Mestre a week later.  Nearly the whole Battalion had been killed or wounded, but they had held up the Austrian advance for several hours.

On the further side of Gradisca we passed a great platform, which had been erected a few weeks before for the Duke of Aosta’s presentation of medals for the Carso offensive.  It was here that the Major had received the Italian Silver Medal for Valour.  The platform looked ironical that night, still decked with bunting, limp and drenched now by the rain, and lit up by the flames of the burning town.  We reached Villa Viola about 11.30 p.m.  It was to have been a rendezvous, but there was no one there.  Only the rain still falling.  About midnight we entered an empty house, and threw ourselves down upon the floor to sleep.