In the valley below was the village of Caprile, where we had arranged to meet our cars. A mountain stream ran past the village, and there was a broad, open space of ground facing the houses, in which was a large encampment with long sheds and hundreds of horses and mules picketted.
As we were walking across to the inn, where we were going to lunch, we heard the dull boom of a gun in the distance, and in a few seconds the approaching wail of a projectile, followed by the report of the explosion a short distance away, and we saw the shell had burst on the hillside a few feet from the Red Cross Hospital.
We had been remarking how quietly the Austrians had taken our artillery attack. This was evidently the commencement of their reply.
The report had scarcely died away than there was a general scurrying of everyone for shelter; mules and horses were rapidly released and hurriedly led away. Then another report was heard in the distance.
This time there was no doubt we were in for a regular bombardment. So with one accord we all made for a low parapet skirting the river, which would afford some cover, and without stopping to look what was behind it, leaped over like two-year-olds just as another shell burst in the open close by.
I don’t think I am ever likely to forget where we found ourselves: below the parapet was the village muck-heap, and we were in the very midst of it. Unsavoury though the recollection is, it makes me smile when I recall it and the look on the faces of everyone who had taken refuge there.
If there was any luck as to position I perhaps, with two others, had the best of it, for we were only in manure and rotten straw, though we were in it up to our waists.
So soon as the report of the guns reached us we all listened intently till we heard the approaching shell, then crouched down as low as possible in the filth, and waited till the explosion was over. I remember I found myself thinking at these moments that it could not have been worse out in the open.
After some minutes in this unpleasant predicament there was a lull in the firing, so a dash was made for the village, and in company with a crowd of soldiers we took refuge behind a house.
Whilst there we witnessed a fine example of coolness. A white-moustached old Colonel, a splendid looking fellow, kept pacing up and down out in the open regardless of the bursting shells, in order to make sure all his men were keeping under cover, and worked himself quite into a rage because some of them would persist in exposing themselves.