iolence. One had also to guard against a dust cloud being
raised by the blast of the guns, thus giving away our position to the
enemy. To prevent this, we formed a chain of men every half hour to pass
water-buckets from hand to hand, from the river just behind us down the
sunken road, to lay the dust in and around the gun pits. But under an
Italian August sun the ground soon grew parched and dusty again.

The Austrians did not shell much till the evening, when they nearly hit
our Mess and shell-shocked a man of another Battery in the road close
by. But the Italian bombardment all day was very heavy, and our guns and
theirs were to go on firing all night. Just before midnight I relieved
the Major in the Command Post, and he and the rest of the officers went
to bed. So I sat there wakefully among the acacias, awaiting any sudden
orders from the Group to switch or lift to new targets, or to vary the
rate of fire. Every now and then I took a walk round the Battery to see
that all was working correctly, and every hour the N.C.O.'s in charge of
each gun brought in their fired tubes to the Command Post and reported
how many rounds had been fired in the preceding hour and how many tubes
misfired.

* * * * *

It was a clear, starlight night, up above the multitudinous flashes of
British and Italian guns. At close quarters these flashes were
blindingly bright, and flung up showers of red sparks. In the intervals
of a few seconds between flashes, if one stood with one's eyes fixed on
the guns, the stars seemed blotted out in an utterly black darkness. A
long bombardment is one of the most boring things in the world by reason
of its intense monotony, and because in a queer half-unconscious way it
begins, after many hours, very slightly to fray the nerves. Listening
and watching in the small hours, and from time to time directing, I
found myself able, with almost discreditable elastic-mindedness, to call
up at will any of the aspects of modern war,--its utter and inherent
wickedness, its artistic and scientific majesty, its occasional moral
justification against the oppressor, its ultimate blank insanity. But I
would not have liked to be an Austrian yesterday or this morning. The
Italian Infantry attacked on our sector at 5.30 a.m. There was a
tremendous crescendo of gunfire at this time. The Major relieved me in
the Command Post at 5 o'clock, and urged me to go to bed, but I did not
feel inclined to