I sent forward an orderly with a message to the Major, describing our plight and asking that, if possible, another tractor might be sent back from Latisana to pull us.  This message never reached the Major, but was opened by another Field officer, who sent back this flatulent reply.  “If you are with Major Blinks, you had better ask him whether you may use your own discretion and, if necessary, remove breech blocks and abandon guns.”  I was not with Major Blinks, and I neither knew nor cared where he might be.  Nor had I any intention of abandoning the guns.  I determined, without asking anyone’s permission, to use my discretion in a different way.

I saw, a little distance in front, an Italian Field Artillery Colonel in a state of wild excitement.  He was rushing about with an unopened bottle of red wine in his hand, waving it ferociously at the heads of refugees, and driving them and their carts off the road down a side track.  A queer pathetic freight some of these carts carried, marble clocks and blankets, big wine flasks and canaries in cages.  The Colonel had driven off the road also a certain Captain Medola, of whom I shall have more to say in a moment, and who was sitting sulkily on his horse among the civilian carts.  The Colonel’s object, it appeared, was to get a number of Field Batteries through.  He had cleared a gap in the blocked traffic and his Field Guns were now streaming past at a sharp trot.  But he was an extraordinary spectacle and made me want to laugh.  Treading very delicately, I approached this enfuriated man, and explained the helpless situation of our guns, pointing out that we were also unwillingly impeding the movements of his own.  I asked if he could order any transport to be provided for us.  He waved his bottle at me, showed no sign of either civility or comprehension, only screaming at the top of his voice, “Va via, va via!"[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Away with you, away with you!”]

I gave him up as hopeless, and went back to my guns, intending to wait till he had disappeared and things had quieted down again, and then to look for help elsewhere.  But the Latin mind often follows a thread of order through what an Anglo-Saxon is apt to mistake for a mere hurricane of confused commotion.  Within five minutes Captain Medola came up to me and said that the Colonel had ordered him to drag our tractor and guns.  Medola was in command of a Battery of long guns, and had one of these attached to a powerful tractor on the road in front of us.  To this long gun, therefore, we now attached our tractor, useless as a tractor but containing valuable gun stores, and our three guns.  It was a tremendous strain for one tractor, however strong, to pull, and we decided a little later to abandon our own tractor and most of its contents.

Medola, having handed over his horse to an orderly, who was to ride on ahead and arrange for a fresh supply of petrol for his tractors, of which there were three, mounted the front of the leading tractor and I got up beside him.  He rendered us most invaluable help in a most willing spirit and at considerable risk to himself.  For he undoubtedly had to go much more slowly with us in tow than he could have gone if he had been alone.