Leslie Keene.
FOOTNOTES
[5] Aeschylus.
THE BRITISH RED CROSS IN ITALY.
BY LEWIS R. FREEMAN.
For the first time in a fortnight there had been a few hours of really good visibility, and, as a consequence, the artillery of both sides were endeavouring to make up for lost time with an increase of activity, just as a pet Pomeranian begins to cut capers the instant it is freed from its restraining leash. For some reason, a goodly share of the Austrian fire appeared to be directed to the vicinity of a certain road along which we had to pick our way in returning from an advanced Italian position we had just visited.
A road under heavy gun fire is not a comfortable place to be at large upon on any of the battle fronts of Europe, and least of all that of the stony Carso, where flying rock fragments increase the casualties three and four-fold over what they would be if the hurtling shells were burying themselves in eight or ten feet of soft earth before accumulating enough resistance to detonate their charges of high explosive. The ‘cave-men’ who held the plateau had all disappeared into their burrows on the ‘lee’ side of the dolinas or sink-holes which pit the repulsive face of the Carsic hills, but here and there along the road there were evidences—mostly pools of blood and scattered kit—that some whom recklessness or duty had kept from cover had met with trouble. Plainly there was going to be work for the Red Cross, and one of the first things I began to wonder about after we had passed on to the comparative shelter of a side-hill, was whether or not they would see fit to risk one of their precious ambulances up there on the shell-torn plateau where, from the rattle and roar, it was evident that, in spite of the failing light, things were going to be considerably worse before they began to be better. Picking up our waiting car in the niche of a protecting cliff, we coasted down across the face of a hillside honeycombed with dug-outs to the bottom of a narrow valley, a point which appeared, for the time being at least, the ‘head of navigation’ for motor traffic. Here we found ourselves stopped by the jam that had piled up on both sides of a hulking ‘210’ that was being warped around a ‘hairpin’ turn. Suddenly I noticed a commotion in the wriggling line of lorries, carts, and pack-mules that wound down from the farther side of the jam, and presently there wallowed into sight a couple of light ambulances, plainly—from the purposeful persistence with which they kept plugging on through the blockade—on urgent business.
Now the very existence of a jam on a road is in itself evidence of the fact that there is an impasse somewhere, and until this is broken the confusion only becomes confounded by any misdirected attempts to push ahead from either direction. But the ambulance is largely a law unto itself, and when it signals for a right-of-way there is always an attempt to make way for it where any other vehicle (save, of course, one carrying reinforcements or munitions at the height of a battle) would have to wait its turn. Mules and carts and lorries crowded closer against each other or edged a few more precarious inches over the side, and by dint of good luck and skilful driving, the two ambulances finally filtered through the blockade and came to a halt alongside our waiting car on the upper end. Then I saw that their cool-headed young drivers were dressed in khaki, and knew, even before I read in English on the side of one of the cars that it was the gift of some Indian province—that they belonged to a unit of the British Red Cross.
‘Plucky chaps those,’ remarked the Italian officer escorting me. ‘Ready to go anywhere and at any time. But it’s hardly possible they’re going to venture up on to the plateau while that bombardment’s going on. That’s work for the night-time, after the guns have quieted down. But there is one of them coming back now; perhaps they’re going to discuss the situation before going on.’