n as the Garibaldian Batteries, which
were always placed at their own request in the most forward positions. I
heard that, when he took over this command, he sent for all his officers
and said, "Now here we are, some old men and some young men and two or
three boys, and we are all here for the same purpose and I hope we shall
all be always the best of good friends. But, as a matter of convenience,
someone has got to be in command of the others, and I have been chosen
because I am the oldest."

He used to tell an amusing story of an encounter he had in France with a
British officer from one of the Dominions, who walked into his bedroom
late one night, after a liberal consumption of liquor, and said he
"wanted the fire" and asked if Bucci was "that Portuguese." Bucci,
having persuasively but vainly asked him to go away, got out of bed and
genially taking him by the shoulders,--he is a powerful man,--ran him
out into the passage. Whereat the British officer, surprised and
protesting, said, "You have no business to treat me like that. Don't you
see that I am a Major and have three decorations?" pointing to his left
breast. "Yes," said Bucci, "and I am a Colonel, and I have some
decorations too, but I don't wear them on my nighty, and I want to go to
sleep."

He had been in Gorizia before Caporetto, and had kept, as a melancholy
souvenir, the maps showing the line of his own Regiment's retreat. "I
call it the Via Crucis," he said. "I want to go back. I want to see an
advance across the Piave with Cavalry and Field Artillery. I want to
advance at the gallop. I have applied to be sent down there." He was a
natural leader of men, and I felt that I would willingly follow him
anywhere.

We saw a good deal too of the officers of a French Observation Balloon.
One of their officers was a tall man, promoted from the ranks, with big
upturned moustaches, a delightful smile and twinkling eyes. He smoked
more cigars than any man I have ever met. He smoked them, like some men
smoke cigarettes, one after another all the evening, with no interval
between. He came from Marseilles. Another was from Auvergne, always most
elegantly dressed. He never smoked at all, for he was very proud of his
white teeth. He spoke Italian and German, but no English. A third was a
little blonde Alsatian business man. He was usually rather quiet, but
one evening I saw him roused, when someone had said something that
displeased him about Alsace. Then he showed