who had now joined us, went up and helped the Italian medical personnel.  Soon afterwards ambulances of both the Italian and British Red Cross began to arrive, and the hospital was quickly cleared.  From one British Red Cross Driver I got a large box of Cabin biscuits, which I distributed among our men, some of whom were ravenously hungry.  I also found a tap of good drinking water in the main street and here we refilled all available water bottles, including those of several men who were too fast asleep to waken.

The question then arose what to do with these stragglers.  I went to the station, but found that no more trains were running.  Latisana was said to be only “a few kilometres” away.  It was in fact more than twenty.  I discovered that it was on the Tagliamento and I supposed that, once across the river, we should be momentarily safe from risk of capture, and, if ammunition was forthcoming, our Batteries might once more come into action.  Meanwhile we should push on as soon as possible.  On the other hand the men were very tired, having been marching for twenty-four hours, with only a few short breaks.  A few hours’ sleep now might be worth a lot to them later on.

Several civilians came up to me and asked when the Germans would be here.  “This is my house,” one old man explained, pointing to a small house near the Hospital, “and I shall have to leave everything if I go away.  But I cannot stay....,” and he began to cry.

In the early hours of the 29th I put some of our most footsore stragglers on to lorries going in the direction of Latisana.  The rest marched off under Henderson, one of the officers from Raven’s Headquarters, who had come with me in the car to San Giorgio.  Meanwhile I was keeping a look-out for our guns in the dense columns of traffic slowly crawling past.  I saw guns belonging to other Batteries, and was told that some of ours were further behind.  It was just getting light, when a tractor appeared drawing two of our guns and one belonging to another British Battery, which we had picked up on the road a long way back with only three gunners in charge of it, and which would certainly have been lost, if we had not taken it in tow.  But, as the result of this additional load, our tractor had been breaking down all the way along, and had fallen almost to the rear of the retreating column.  It had a damnable and useless accumulator, but there was no means of changing this.  With the tractor and guns were Winterton, Darrell, and Leary, also the Battery Quartermaster Sergeant and two of our lorries.  They told me Manzoni was well on ahead with the other two guns and I told them that the Major and the bulk of the dismounted party must also be a good distance ahead, as stragglers from this party had appeared here many hours before.