[Footnote 1: One wounded British soldier, who had been in an Italian Field Hospital which was not evacuated in time, was taken prisoner by the Austrians. He told me, when he was released a year later, that the Austrians bayoneted the Italian wounded whom they found in this hospital, but spared the British, and, on the whole, treated them well.]

We reached Palmanova about 7 a.m. It was now the 28th of October. We met Raven in the Square, where were also collected a British General and his Staff officers. They were standing about, with a half lost look on their faces. There was no evidence of decision or any plan. The General was smiling, as his habit was. The Staff Captain was telling someone, in a hopeless voice, that he had heard that the Italians were going back to the Tagliamento. Just as we arrived, the Italians began to set fire to the town. Dense clouds of black smoke, fanned by a strong wind, began to pour over our heads. Flames were soon roaring round houses, where three months ago I had been a guest. But the inmates had all gone now. Food and drink was being sold in the shops at knock-down prices. The Italian military authorities were requisitioning all bread, and issued some to us. The Major ordered it to be kept in reserve.

I went round the town and into the Railway Station looking for our guns. But there was no sign of them. I came back and slept for an hour amid some rubble under the archway inside one of the town gates. The town was burning furiously. Our men, wet to the skin, sheltered themselves from the smoke and the cold wind in the dry moat outside the walls.

Then the order came to move on. We formed up and started with the rest. Nobody knew whither. Some said Latisana, but no one knew how far off this was. The men had no rations except the bread obtained at Palmanova, and no prospect, apparently, of getting any. The Supply Officers of the A.S.C. might as well have gone to Heaven, for all the use they were to us during those days of retreat. It was raining again and the roads were blocked. We proceeded slowly for a mile or two, and were then turned off the road into a damp, open field, which someone said was a "strategic point." Here a number of different Battery parties collected. We were to wait for the guns. The downpour steadily increased, the field rapidly became a marsh, and there was no shelter anywhere. Raven walked up and down, puffing at this pipe, taking the situation with admirable calm. It was at this time that I personally touched my bedrock of misery, both mental and physical. For there seemed to be nothing to be done, and, what most irked me, there were so many senior officers present that I myself could take no decisions. Then some of our guns arrived, and were halted at the side of the road to wait for the rest. But this made the traffic block worse, and they had to move forward again, and the idea of getting them all together was abandoned.

Raven then gave the order to the rest of us to move on. There were some vacant places in various cars and lorries at this point and some footsore men were put in. The Major insisted, in spite of my protests that I preferred to walk, that I should get into one of the cars, which I shared with Littleton, the Chaplain who had thought that war "might be tremendously worth while" and three junior officers from Raven's Headquarters. I was, in truth, pretty done at this stage, chiefly through want of sleep, compared to which I always found want of food a trifling inconvenience. It was now about 4 p.m. and we could only make very slow progress. A rendezvous had been fixed by Raven at Foglie, where rations were to have been distributed. But there was no one and no rations there, and it seemed that Raven had taken the wrong road. The enemy were said to be advancing from the north at right angles to our only possible line of retreat, and the chances seemed strongly in favour of our all being cut off.

An Italian doctor ran out into the road and stopped our car, almost beside himself with despair. He had been left in charge of a number of severely wounded cases, without any food, medical necessities or transport. But we had no food and could do nothing to help him, except promise to try to have transport sent back to him from San Giorgio di Nogara.

CHAPTER XXII

FROM SAN GIORGIO TO THE TAGLIAMENTO

We reached San Giorgio about 9 p.m. and here I got out of the car, which two of Raven's Staff took on to try and arrange for transport to be sent back for the Italian wounded. Having slept for an hour or two in the car, I felt quite a different being and fit for anything. Stragglers were coming in from the various Batteries' dismounted parties, and I collected nearly a hundred of these men into a hall on the ground floor of an Italian Field Hospital. They lay about on the stone floor, sleeping like logs. Upstairs a panic had spread among the wounded that they would be abandoned. Men were crying with terror and struggling to get out of bed. Campbell, who had now joined us, went up and helped the Italian medical personnel. Soon afterwards ambulances of both the Italian and British Red Cross began to arrive, and the hospital was quickly cleared. From one British Red Cross Driver I got a large box of Cabin biscuits, which I distributed among our men, some of whom were ravenously hungry. I also found a tap of good drinking water in the main street and here we refilled all available water bottles, including those of several men who were too fast asleep to waken.

The question then arose what to do with these stragglers. I went to the station, but found that no more trains were running. Latisana was said to be only "a few kilometres" away. It was in fact more than twenty. I discovered that it was on the Tagliamento and I supposed that, once across the river, we should be momentarily safe from risk of capture, and, if ammunition was forthcoming, our Batteries might once more come into action. Meanwhile we should push on as soon as possible. On the other hand the men were very tired, having been marching for twenty-four hours, with only a few short breaks. A few hours' sleep now might be worth a lot to them later on.