From my sleeping hut and from the Battery Command Post I used to hear for days afterwards the Italian Infantry singing in great choruses, far into the night.  There was triumph in their songs, and there was ribaldry and there was longing.  I thought I knew what dreams were in their hearts, and, if I was right, those dreams were also mine.

The advance left us a long way behind the new front line, and we expected to move our guns forward; indeed we selected and asked to be allowed to occupy a very good position behind Montagna Nuova.  But this was not allowed, and we stayed where we were for another six weeks.  It snowed a great deal and we fired very little.  But we had plenty to do to keep pathways dug between the guns and the huts; often we had to clear these afresh every hour.

During this time I made the acquaintance of several interesting Italians and Frenchmen.  Among these was Colonel Bucci, who had been attached the year before to the Staff of one of the British Armies in France.  He was now in command of a Regiment of Field Artillery, including a group of Batteries known as the Garibaldian Batteries, which were always placed at their own request in the most forward positions.  I heard that, when he took over this command, he sent for all his officers and said, “Now here we are, some old men and some young men and two or three boys, and we are all here for the same purpose and I hope we shall all be always the best of good friends.  But, as a matter of convenience, someone has got to be in command of the others, and I have been chosen because I am the oldest.”

He used to tell an amusing story of an encounter he had in France with a British officer from one of the Dominions, who walked into his bedroom late one night, after a liberal consumption of liquor, and said he “wanted the fire” and asked if Bucci was “that Portuguese.”  Bucci, having persuasively but vainly asked him to go away, got out of bed and genially taking him by the shoulders,—­he is a powerful man,—­ran him out into the passage.  Whereat the British officer, surprised and protesting, said, “You have no business to treat me like that.  Don’t you see that I am a Major and have three decorations?” pointing to his left breast.  “Yes,” said Bucci, “and I am a Colonel, and I have some decorations too, but I don’t wear them on my nighty, and I want to go to sleep.”

He had been in Gorizia before Caporetto, and had kept, as a melancholy souvenir, the maps showing the line of his own Regiment’s retreat.  “I call it the Via Crucis,” he said.  “I want to go back.  I want to see an advance across the Piave with Cavalry and Field Artillery.  I want to advance at the gallop.  I have applied to be sent down there.”  He was a natural leader of men, and I felt that I would willingly follow him anywhere.