The Austrian offensive on the mountain sector, from the Astico to Monte Grappa, had been obviously and decisively broken by the 18th of June. But there was still danger on the plain, particularly in the Montello sector, where the Austrians were established in strong force west of the Piave. A flying Brigade of British Heavy Artillery was hurriedly formed and sent down the mountains. Of this Brigade my own Battery formed part. Our general function was to reinforce the Italian Artillery in what was at the moment the most critical sector of the whole Front, our particular function to destroy by shell fire the Piave bridges behind the Austrian troops. But when we arrived we found that the emergency had already passed. The bridges had already been destroyed by airmen and Italian Artillery, and the Austrian forces had either been driven back across or into the river by Italian counter-attacks, or had been cut off and compelled to surrender. We, therefore, came back to the Plateau without firing a round.
But we did not remain there long. The idea of a mobile Artillery of manoeuvre was much talked of at this time, and early in July a Brigade consisting of three British Siege Batteries, my own included, was moved westwards up into the Trentino. We travelled all the way by road, through Verona up to Brescia, "the eagle that looks over Lombardy," and thence beside Lake Idro, up the Val Chiese, past Storo into the Val D'Ampola.
All this last stretch of country is famous in Italian history as the scene of Garibaldi's campaign of 1866, which, had it not been interrupted by the course of events elsewhere, would probably have hastened the liberation of Trento by more than half a century, and greatly modified the problems of Italian policy in recent years. The story is well known of the recall of Garibaldi, which reached him at the moment of victory at Bezzecca, and of his famous reply, a model of laconic self-discipline, in the one word "Ubbidisco"—"I obey." The little town of Bezzecca lay this July behind the Italian lines, but in full view and easy range of the Austrians. A company of Arditi was billeted here, with whom I lunched one day, returning from a front line reconnaissance. The Piazza had been renamed by the Italians "Piazza Ubbidisco," and under cover of darkness they set up one night on the mountain side just above the town a memorial stone to Garibaldi and his volunteers of 1866, a provocative target for Austrian gunners.
No other British troops, except these three Batteries of ours, ever fought in the Trentino. It was a proud distinction and a very memorable experience. The natural scenery was superb, a series of great mountain ranges, uneven lines of jagged peaks, enclosing deep cut valleys, the lower slopes of the mountains densely wooded, the higher levels bare precipitous rock. The Austrian front line ran along one ridge of peaks and ours along another; between ran a deep valley, all No Man's Land, into which patrols used to climb down at night, often with the aid of ropes. One mountain mass, a continuation of Cima d'Oro, was partly in our possession and partly in theirs, and up there by night among the rocks patrols grappled for the mastery, poised high above the world, and in these struggles men sometimes slipped, or were thrown, to crash to death thousands of feet below in the Val di Ledro.
This country was Austrian before the war, though inhabited wholly by Italians, and Italian troops had conquered it with extraordinary feats of endurance and daring in their first great onrush all along their old frontiers in the spring of 1915. But now a big advance here by either side, in the face of carefully prepared opposition, seemed almost inconceivable, except as the result of some wide turning movement, hinging on some point many miles away.
The special military problems presented by warfare in such country were numerous and difficult. Our guns had to be dragged into position up a rough mountain track, which at some points was too narrow and at others too weak to allow the passage of a six-inch howitzer without much preliminary blasting and building up. Our first gun to go up took twenty-four hours of continuous labour between the time of starting up the track and the time of arriving in position, a distance of only about two miles of zig-zag. No tractor or other power engine could be used here. The only force available was that of men hauling on drag ropes, and a party of sixty Italian gunners reinforced our men.
What may be called the problems of pure gunnery were still more difficult. British Heavy guns had never fired under such conditions before and, for the benefit of such of my readers as may be practical Artillerymen, it may be interesting to remark that for one of our targets the angle of sight, properly so called, worked out at more than twenty degrees, while the map-range elevation was only about fifteen. The devising of an accurate formula for correction of elevation for a large "dislivello," as the Italians shortly call it, which in English means a large "difference of level" between a gun and its target, is one of the most intricate problems of theoretical gunnery, or, for that matter, of theoretical mechanics, involving, among other factors, the various shapes and sizes of projectiles, their comparative steadiness during flight, the resistance of the air, and the effect of other atmospheric conditions and of the force of gravity.
There was a splendid opportunity for systematically testing various rival formulae in the Trentino, but it was allowed to slip. Among gunners, as among other classes, and especially among Regular Army gunners, the so-called practical man sees little value in scientific experiments, which do not produce large, obvious and quick returns. We fired many hundred rounds in the Trentino and I have no doubt that they were tolerably effective. But most of them were fired at night, with no observation possible, and we were often restricted in our registrations by daylight to four rounds a section per target, from which no really reliable conclusions could be drawn.[1]
[Footnote 1: We could get no help from Italian range tables, which were not merely for different guns and ammunition, but were drawn up on different principles from our own.]
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