avy Artillery Group, in front of them a British and an Italian
Battery, one on each side of the road leading past Kaberlaba to the
front line. To the right of the Italian Headquarters, across the San
Sisto road, was a French Battery, with two Italian Batteries in front of
it. To our own right rear was one Italian Battery and two French, and in
rear of them, back along the road to Granezza, our own Brigade
Headquarters.

This mixture was a good arrangement, stimulating friendly rivalry and
facilitating _liaison_ and exchange of ideas. Our relations were
specially cordial with the Italian-Group Headquarters and with one of
the French Batteries on our left. The Italian Major commanding this
Group was a Mantuan and he and I became firm friends. It was in his Mess
one night, in reply to the toast of the Allies, that I made my first
after-dinner speech in Italian. I do not claim that it was grammatically
perfect, but all that I said was, I think, well understood, and I was
in no hesitation for words.

Not till the end of May did Spring really climb the mountains, and the
snow finally vanish, and then the days, apart from the facts of war,
were perfect, blue sky and sunshine all day long among the warm aromatic
pines and the freshness of the mountain air. Here and there, in
clearings in the forest, were patches of thick, rich grass, making a
bright contrast to the dull, dark green of the pines, and in the grass
arose many-coloured wild flowers.

The Italians have buried their dead up here in little groups among the
trees, and not in great graveyards. There was one such little group on
the hillside in the middle of our Battery position, between two of our
gunpits. There was another in the middle of our forward position at San
Sisto, and another, where some thirty Bersaglieri and Artillerymen were
buried, in the Baerenthal Valley. It was here one day that an Irish
Major, newly come to Italy, said to me, "I don't want any better grave
than that." Nor did I. It was a place of marvellous and eternal beauty,
ever changing with the seasons. It made one's heart ache to be in the
midst of it. It was hither that they brought in the months that followed
many of the British dead, who fell in this sector, and laid them beside
the Italians, at whose graves we had looked that day.

CHAPTER XXX

SOME NOTES ON NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

For a week or two in May an Italian Engineer officer messed with us. He
had a sleeping hut on the