It was about ten o’clock on that morning when I reached the village of Latisana, where was the southernmost bridge across the Tagliamento.  The streets of the little town were simply chock-a-block with troops which were pouring into it from converging roads.  Two or three Italian officers, splashed to the eyes with mud and hoarse with shouting, had organized some control at this point, or otherwise nothing would have moved at all.  Pushing soldiers this way and that, seizing horses’ heads, straining their voices against the din of clattering motors, they held up each stream of traffic in turn for a few minutes and passed the other through.

[Sidenote:  An English soldier keeps his air of efficiency.]

[Sidenote:  Men in great need of food.]

Conspicuous in his khaki among this spate of Italian gray, stood an English soldier contentedly munching dry brown bread.  The motor-bicycle at his side indicated him as a despatch-rider belonging to one of the batteries.  It would have been hard to say whether machine or man was the more travel-stained.  The cycle’s front wheel was badly bent, evidently by some collision; the soldier’s hand was bound with a dirty rag, and his face clotted with the blood of a congealed scratch, the result of having been pushed off the road by a motor-lorry in the dark and falling head-long down a stone embankment.  Yet about both mount and man there was still an air of efficiency and unimpaired fundamental soundness that was encouraging, and the mud-plastered figure saluted the English officer at my side with a flick of the wrist that would have passed on the parade-ground at Wellington Barracks.  Two guns of his battery, he reported, were three or four miles back down the road; the men were dead-beat, but the worst was that they had had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours, owing to the tractor that had their rations on board catching fire and burning them; they had picked up scraps of bread that other troops had dropped, and some of them had tried and appreciated cutlets from a dead mule; they needed food to restore their strength for they had been working hard without sleep for two days and nights.  It had been forty-eight hours of continuous hauling on those heavy guns, which were constantly getting edged off the road by other traffic, and which had to be unhitched every time the tractor stopped because it was so overloaded that it would not start with the full weight of its tow.  So the officer had sent him on ahead to scout for food, and he had just found a sosistenza where they had given him a sack of bread to take back.

“You all right yourself?” asked my officer-companion.

“Quite all right, sir, thank you,” he answered, and slinging the bulging sack across his shoulders, the despatch-rider straddled his battered bicycle and set off on a sinuous path through the wedged traffic, with his bent front-wheel writhing like a tortured snake.

[Sidenote:  Finding the way to reach Padua.]