With British Guns in Italy: A Tribute to Italian Achievement

by Baron Hugh Dalton Dalton

CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING AT GORIZIA

On the first day in August I had been doing some observation at S. Andrea in the afternoon, and, this duty over, I got permission to walk into Gorizia and visit the section of the British Red Cross stationed there, several of whose members I knew. It is a longer walk than one would think, for S. Andrea is practically a southern suburb of Gorizia, which, however, straggles over a large area of country. The railway bridge across the Isonzo is broken down by shell fire and so are two other bridges,—all three of stone,—but these could be soon repaired, if we made a big advance. It would be wasted labour to repair them now, for the Austrians would only break them down again. The Italians have run up a low, broad wooden bridge, sheltered from Austrian view behind one of the broken stone bridges. From time to time the Austrians hit this bridge, and then the Italians quickly make it good again. To be able to cross the Isonzo at this point is a convenience, but not a military necessity, for all movement of troops and supplies into Gorizia can be carried out on the left bank of the river and across bridges some miles further down-stream.

The suburbs of the town were badly knocked about, but the centre was not at this time much damaged. Gorizia lies in a salient of the hills, with the Austrians looking down upon it from the tops of most of them. But, still hoping to win it back, they do not shell it heavily or often. There are special reasons, too, for their forbearance. For Gorizia is a sort of Austrian Cheltenham, whither Austrian officers retire in large numbers to pass their last years in villas which they take over from one another's widows. So the Austrian officer class has a sort of vested interest in the preservation of the place. So also have certain Hebrew Banks in Vienna, which hold mortgages on a great part of the land in and around the city, which just before the war was being rapidly developed as a fashionable Spa. It is a well laid out town, with large public gardens and good buildings, architecturally very like the larger Italian towns on the other side of the old frontier, Udine for example, but with a certain element of a heavier and more rococo style, the Viennese. There is still a fairly large civilian population in the town, and one restaurant still keeps open.

I found the British Red Cross in the Via Ponte Isonzo, in what had once been a big boarding-house, with a large untidy garden behind. Most of those stationed there were motor ambulance drivers, about twenty in number, some too old to fight, some rejected for health, some Quakers, unwilling to kill, but willing to risk their own lives on behalf of the wounded, others again boys under military age, who go, as soon as they can, to the Navy or the Flying Corps. It is brave and nervous work they do, driving ambulances in the dark, without lights and under fire.

After dinner I sat out in the garden in the twilight and talked with an old acquaintance of mine, who has had a large share in the organisation and daily work of the British Red Cross in Italy. The Italians, he said, are really beginning to feel their feet, as a united nation, in this war. Men of all classes from all parts of Italy are meeting and mixing with one another as they have never done before, and the old regionalismo is being rapidly undermined. He himself has almost ceased to think critically of the past or speculatively of the future, but just lives and works in the present. As to the state of the world after the war, he is very confident, provided we go on fighting long enough. Nothing that happens at home is of great importance, all the pressure is on the Fronts. Everything is looking now in the direction of democracy. Even Russia, in the long run unconquerable, has got her good out of the war already, whatever miseries and transitory anarchy she may have yet to undergo. In England and elsewhere many of the present political leaders are vile, but we shall all know what we want the world to look like, and to be like, after the war, and new leaders will arise and lead us. When the survivors of our smitten generation have grown old, there must be a peace of hearts, as well as a peace of arms, between the young of all lands. But our generation can never make personal friendships again with Germans, seeing that they have killed nearly all those who mattered most to us, and that we have to spend the rest of our lives without them.

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He motored me back to the Vippacco bridge at Rubbia. When next I heard of him it was a month later at the height of the Italian offensive. He had been severely wounded on the Bainsizza Plateau.

The British Red Cross did splendid work in Italy and made a big contribution to Anglo-Italian friendship and understanding. They began their operations in Italy in September 1915, and were thus the first Englishmen to "show the flag" on the Italian Front. Thousands of Italians will gratefully and affectionately remember them till the end of their lives. More even than the British fighting troops who came after them, the British Red Cross will remain a historic legend in Italy in the days to come.