It was impossible to get telephonic communication with the Battery from Cima Echar, so we could not, as we had hoped, do from there some registrations on wire and trench junctions on Sisemol, which were among our allotted targets.  We therefore went back to Costalunga, where the Italian Field and Mountain Batteries along the crest were firing away with great vigour, and after an excellent lunch, which had been hospitably prepared for us, went down again into the valley and walked several miles further west to Monte Tondo.

I noticed at lunch, as on several other occasions lately, a change in the Italian attitude to good weather.  They no longer hoped that it would break and so prevent further Austrian offensives.  They hoped it would continue and so permit offensives of their own.  Their morale was rapidly rising.  We had, indeed, received the previous day the artillery portion of an elaborate offensive plan, but no date had yet been fixed for it.

We climbed up Monte Tondo and down the other side and made our way to an O.P. in a front line trench.  For fifty yards of the way there was a break in the trench line and we had to run across the open through knee-deep snow.  But the Austrians didn’t fire.  From this O.P. we had again a fine view of Asiago and the country round it.  After delays connected with the telephone, we succeeded in registering two targets.  While we were firing, all the woods and houses grew rosy in the sunset.  It was dark when we finished.  We went back with a Major of the Pisa Brigade, a quiet, spare little man, of great energy and exhausting speed of movement.  He gave us coffee and showed us maps at his Brigade Headquarters and then sent us on to the Regimental Headquarters, further down the hill, where they gave us rum punch, believing, as all Italians do, that an Englishman is never happy unless he is drinking alcohol.  We got back to the Battery in the moonlight.

On January 27th the long expected action began, and our Brigade lost one of its best officers, who was hit in the head in the front line O.P. on Monte Tondo.  His steel helmet and the skill of Italian doctors just saved his life, but he was permanently out of the war.  The Italians put their best doctors right forward in the advanced dressing stations.  All that day we bombarded enemy Batteries and cross roads and barbed wire.  Next morning the Italian Infantry carried Col Valbella and Col d’Echele by assault.  The day after they took also Col del Rosso, and beat back very heavy counter-attacks.  The Sassari Brigade and a Brigade of Bersaglieri specially distinguished themselves.  It was an important and useful success.  It considerably improved our line between the Asiago Plateau and Val Brenta, it deprived the enemy of the secure use of the Val Frenzela, and it was the first offensive operation of any importance undertaken by the Italians since the great retreat.  Its success went to prove that the Italian Army had been effectively reorganised, and that its morale was again high.