‘On reaching the Italian side again we found a block, three carts wide, extending back almost to Lucinico. We were forced to abandon, therefore, the remaining Ford Ambulance, for which it proved impossible to make a passage. After a few hundred yards of slow progress in the block, the touring car fell over the side of the road into a shell hole. It was extricated, but a few yards further the block became impracticable. We left it, half in a trench, and walked to Vallisella. On the way we met our two remaining cars, loaded with the material of the hospitals to which we were attached, also completely locked in the block.
‘At Vallisella we filled rucksacks with food and thermos, and with our adjutant, Kennedy, to help, trudged back for the bridge. Fortunately, our tramp-like appearance only led to one “hold-up” in the kindly darkness.
‘My anxiety to return was emphasised by the certainty that the Austrians would begin shelling the bridge as soon as daylight revealed the block. Day broke as we approached it. The risk had also appealed to the drivers, and we met the lorries, cars, &c., all breaking out of the jam and racing for the cover of Lucinico. Glaisyer was able to move off just as we reached him. The two cars that were still on the near side got down to the protection of the Galleria with their hospital staff.
‘As I walked up to the bridge, I was just in time to see Woolmer ably rushing the Crossley over the holes, across which the Genio had thrown a few loose planks and beams. The heavier Buick had to be carefully piloted over, Christie winding through the gaps and rushing the awkward narrow traverses with skill and nerve. The Buick was the last heavy car to recross before the bridge, under fire, was repaired about mid-day. It had also been the first to cross.
‘We were barely clear of the bridge—perhaps four minutes—when the first big shell exploded at the Italian end.’
From the time of the capture of Gorizia down to the present the cars of the First Unit have been stationed there, picking up their wounded within a mile of the Austrian first-line trenches. At the time of my visit to the British Red Cross Hospital one of the drivers had just suffered a broken leg and other injuries sustained when the walls of his quarters in Gorizia were blown down upon him by an Austrian shell.
‘They’re talking about sending me home on a bit of a leave to rest up a bit,’ he told me; ‘but—much as I should like to go—I’m not too keen on it. It’s more men we need here, rather than less. So, unless they insist upon it, I think my leave can wait better than our wounded.’
That seems to me fairly typical of the spirit imbuing every member of the Mission with whom I talked.