"An army or division engaged in one sector of a great battle is prone to take to itself more than its quota of the success from the united efforts of many divisions. A division may be so placed as to bear the brunt of an offensive and by a stubborn, bloody stand stop a disastrous defeat; but it takes many combined divisions fighting with equal valor and success under a great staff to put over a great offensive, such as was the battle of Vittorio Veneto; in result, at least, the greatest battle of the world.
"After the battle the same noises and apparent confusion of the advance was repeated; of soldiers moving north by way of Tonale Pass to the front; now far in enemy country beyond the cities of Male, Cles and Bolzano to Innsbruck; of prisoners, Austrian, Hungarian and German, taken south to labor in the fields of the plain of Lombardy, or even to the Riviera to work in the quarries and upon the roads on the foothills of the Apennines, overlooking the blue Mediterranean.
"Many feel that the final, fatal stroke to the Central Powers was given by Italy when driving the Austrian army north and east, she took more than 450,000 prisoners. More she might have had, but they were permitted to move on, a disheveled, discouraged host, witnesses to the Austrian and German people of a last, fatal defeat; they tramped northward self-stripped of all equipment as a half-drowned man might throw away his clothes, hoping to reach a distant shore.
"After the battle, in which I took a prominent part, I followed behind these half-starved, half-naked soldiers, first a fleeing army, then a mighty horde of discouraged tramps, then corraled and organized and under guard. The road was pock-marked with shell holes, which were being filled by laboring soldiers, first with Austrian dead, then stones, then earth. The way was strewn with weapons and clothing and blankets and helmets and love tokens and overturned trucks and cannon and dead horses and dead men.
"The weak and famished died by the roadside or gorged themselves on the dead artillery horses or those ridden to death by fleeing cavalry and officers. Their hunger appeased, many sat in the sun, naked to the waist ridding themselves of vermin or lay in exhausted stupor. The stench was as revolting as the picture.
"Such was the panorama all the way from Tonale Pass east, to Fucina, Male, Cles, Bolzano and south to Trent and Rovereto and along the Piave to the sea.
"Now, if you will pardon personal allusions, I will tell you how I was wounded and how I obtained the Croce di Guerra. I—, etc. I—, etc," (We will omit the account.)
As John Calhoun now called himself a Republican, his residence at Richmond in a congressional district normally Democratic, did not suit his political ambitions; so in December, following Governor Morrow's election, he removed to Pineville in the Eleventh Congressional District, which was overwhelmingly Republican, and for a lawyer a better business location than Richmond.
He built a very handsome, brick residence on one of the foothills of Pine Mountain overlooking the little, mountain city and the broad valley in the bend of the Cumberland.