But let me tell you the sequel.
At length the men were able to bound forward in the darkness towards the enemy trenches. Just at that moment the moon suddenly beamed forth behind the clouds, revealing the shattered summit of the Col, heaps of mutilated bodies, and groups of dumfounded, trembling survivors, with arms upraised in token of surrender. All this time our artillery was raining a shower of shells on the mountain saddle between the Col di Lana and Monte Sief, with the double object of preventing the flight of the enemy and their reinforcement. But they were all glad to give in, being thoroughly unnerved and dazed, and well aware of the fact that both telegraphic and telephonic communication with their main forces had been completely destroyed by the explosion.
It seems that at the fateful hour they happened to have an extra force on the Col, a company sent specially from Sief to relieve the soldiery in the trenches; hence the large number of victims. Considerably over two hundred must have been blown to atoms or killed by falling débris.
But we had no time that night to bother about the dead and wounded. Our whole attention was directed towards the prisoners, a first batch of whom, including four officers, was soon being taken down the mountain by ten of our brave volunteers. A second batch of five officers and a hundred and ten men followed soon afterwards. In addition we took possession of a shattered mountain gun, cleverly mounted in a cavern and half-a-dozen equally useless mitrailleuses. Five others, with two hundred rifles, were intact. Stores of food sufficient to have lasted the entire garrison for another month completed our booty.
So ended the affair of the Col di Lana, which will ever be linked in the Italian annals of the war with the name of Don Gelasio Caetani, to whom is due a good deal of the credit of the great advance which, immediately afterwards, we made along the main highway through the Dolomites.
LAST HOURS OF EDITH CAVELL ON NIGHT OF EXECUTION
Experience of American Diplomat in Effort to Save Life of English Nurse
Told by Hugh Gibson, Secretary of American Legation at Brussels
This is the official story of the events on the midnight just before the execution of Edith Cavell, the English nurse, who became the first woman martyr of the Great War. Hugh Gibson here relates how, with the Spanish Minister and a Belgian counsellor, he went to the house of the German Governor at Brussels late at night and pleaded with Baron von der Lancken and the German officers for a stay of execution. The American Minister, Brand Whitlock, too ill to make the journey himself, waited at the American Embassy for the results of the mission. The story is told in the official report to Minister Whitlock, which was forwarded to the British Government. The narrative given herewith is from Mr. Gibson's statement in the World's Work, with introductory reports from other sources.