aughter and demoralisation.

On the British right Divisional Front, in support of which our Brigade
was operating, the British 23rd Division fought a fight worthy of their
high reputation. Forced back for a while from their front line trenches,
after a prolonged and intense bombardment and by an overwhelming
superiority of numbers, they never even fell back to their support line.
But, turning on the enemy who was advancing along and astride the San
Sisto road, they drove him back and re-established their own front line
within six hours of the first attack. It was here that a boy Colonel, a
Sherwood Forester scarcely twenty-one years old, won the V.C. and fell
severely wounded. When things looked black, he had organised the defence
and the subsequent counter-attack, collecting together British
Infantrymen of several Battalions, together with British Artillerymen
and Italian Machine-Gunners and Engineers, welding them into a coherent
force and making swift, yet well thought out, dispositions which did
much to save the situation.

On the right of the British, the French Infantry, though furiously
assaulted, never, I believe, budged an inch. On the right of the French,
the Italians were momentarily driven from Col Valbella, Col del Rosso
and Col d'Echele, which they had won in January, but retook all three a
few days later.

But we in the Battery knew nothing of all this at the time. We knew only
that we had to open fire on our counter-preparation target. The gunpit
of our No. 1 gun near the cross-roads was in low-lying ground, now so
full of gas that one could hardly see one's hand before one's face.
Fortunately we could achieve the rate of fire required by using three
guns only, so we left No. 1 out of action for the time. The enemy's
bombardment, as far as we were concerned, was beginning to slacken a
little, but was still heavy. The Major, out on the road with a signaller
mending wire, was hit in the face with shrapnel. It turned out, happily,
not a serious wound, but at the time it looked less hopeful. He went
down the mountains in the same Field Ambulance with the young Colonel of
the Sherwood Foresters, of whom I have already spoken.

There was an abandoned Field Ambulance in the road, half in the ditch,
with the engine still running. The driver had found the shelling too hot
to stay. There was no one inside it, but we got a couple of stretchers
from it. And we had need of them. No. 4 gun, my own gun, which was
n