The same day came the news of the fall of the Italian Government, which had been attacked during the fortnight by a strange combination of the advanced wing of the pro-war party who considered that the ministry was not displaying enough firmness in its conduct of the campaign, with the pacifist socialist party who denounced the Government for infringing the constitutional rights of the people in the interests of militarism. A feeling of malaise was in the air. All the elements of success were present in the Italian Army except the most important of all, the psychological element.
Evacuation of Udine.
By this time motor-lorries had already begun to pour back through Udine, and in the streets the Signal Corps were taking down the telegraph-wires. You saw little parties of father, mother, and children suddenly emerge from house or shop, each with hand-luggage. If you looked closely you generally saw that the woman was crying.
Air fights between Germans and Italians.
On the twenty-sixth there were frequent attempts to reach Udine by German flyers who were new to the ground. It was the first time that the Italian Air Corps had had to deal with a German attempt to contest their supremacy and they came well out of the trial. Ten enemy machines were brought down during the day, two individual Italian airmen accounting for three each. When the enemy machines were sighted heading for Udine the jarring scream of a siren gave the alarm, and the police cleared the streets.
Saturday, October 27, was the day of general exodus.
Batteries hold rearward positions.
I left Udine early on Saturday morning, in the car of the British general commanding our artillery contingent on the Italian front, to go up to the batteries and see how they got on in the retreat. We crawled out toward the front along roads blocked with rearward-moving traffic for which there was no organization, and after lunching at the general's headquarters at Gradisca, I went on to Rubbia, just across the Isonzo, to the south of Gorizia, where was the group headquarters of the batteries. Already the supply service of the Third Army were pouring in a black mass along the road, screened at the side and overhead by rushmats from the observation of the enemy. Voices and hammering under the long wooden bridge across the Isonzo at Rubbia were signs that the Italian engineers were putting in position charges of explosive to blow it up when as much material as possible had been brought over. Some of our batteries had already been withdrawn to rearward positions not far from group headquarters and were firing as fast as the guns could be reloaded. The others were still in their old emplacements a mile or so farther forward, being shelled terrifically by the Austrian twelve-inch batteries, but having extraordinary luck. They were using up as much of their ammunition as they could, because it was becoming clearer every moment that the Italian transport service was not going to be able to supply the lorries to move the shells, which were big enough for fifty of them to make a full lorry-load.
Lack of motor lorries to move ammunition.
A major from one of the batteries came into group headquarters while I was in the mess. He was dark under the eyes after a couple of sleepless nights, for his men had been working hard all round the clock to get the ammunition back from the forward dumps, labor that afterward proved wasted, as there were no lorries forthcoming to carry it farther on. Sixty twelve-inch shells and one aeroplane bomb a yard away from one of his four guns was the afternoon's experience of his battery, and only one man wounded made up the casualty-list for the same period.