I duly reported myself and was given my “pass” to go on to the scene of action at once if I chose; not the slightest difficulty was placed in my way; in fact, everything was done to facilitate my work, even to providing me with a car and an officer to act as my guide.
So without delay I started for Vicenza, the nearest important place to the fighting. Everything was very calm and peaceful there, no sign of anything out of the common happening. Yet the Austrians had got within 25 miles of the city and less than five from the Venetian Plain, which surrounds it. Truly the Latin temperament has undergone a wonderful metamorphosis in the last decade.
We stayed the night in Vicenza, and started the following morning for Arsiero, the Italian town in Schio, occupied by the Austrians, and which had only a few days previously been recaptured. For the first fifteen miles or so there was nothing of particular interest along the road except the endless defile of troops and transport of every description, such as might have been expected; but in the villages the daily life of the peasants appeared to be going on as usual, with women and children everywhere.
Then one appeared to cross an invisible line of demarcation, and once beyond it, all was changed.
It was like going from daylight into darkness. The smiling villages were deserted, save where some of the cottages were occupied by soldiers. Through the open windows one saw that not only were the inhabitants gone, but that they had removed most of their household goods and chattels with them.
In several places were indications of panic—articles lying about as though dropped in flight, even washing abandoned by a stream. The sadness of it all was most impressive, but worse was to come. As we neared the scene of the Austrian thrust there was abundant evidence of the fate that would have been in store for any hapless folk whose homes happened to be in reach of the Austrian guns.
Up till now what had impressed me perhaps most of all in the war on the Italian Front was the entire absence, so to speak, of the horrors of war in the shape of devastated towns, villages and country sides, such as one got so hardened to in France and Belgium. This impression was now to be rudely dispelled.
Once inside the radius of the big guns the spectacle was but a repetition of what I had seen on the Western Front; heaps of shapeless rubble and smouldering ruin on all sides bore witness to Hun methods of frightfulness.
We at length came in sight of Arsiero and had to leave the car as the road, which had been getting more and more choked with débris, now became impassible. Moreover, big shells were coming over with persistent frequency, and we could not afford to take any risk of our transport being injured. We had no desire to walk back.
One must have seen the Front here for oneself in order to form any conception of what the Austrian thrust meant, and how near it was to succeeding.