earest to the road, suffered most severely. Seven of the detachment on
this gun were hit, not all at once but, what is apt to be much more
demoralising, at intervals of a few minutes. A Bombardier was in charge
of the gun that day, no senior N.C.O.'s being available. He showed a
very wonderful coolness and courage. Shells were bursting all round the
gunpit, and sometimes in the gunpit itself. But the rate of fire never
slackened. Every now and again the cry was heard "another casualty on
No. 4!" and stretcher bearers would start down the road from the Command
Post. But, each time, almost before they had started, came the deep
report of another round fired. No casualties and no shelling could
silence her. At one time this Bombardier had only two other men to help
him work the gun. And both of them were as undismayed as he. He won the
Military Medal for his gallantry that day, and I was very proud of him
and of No. 4.

The Brigade Chaplain appeared in the course of the morning and gave a
hand in carrying the wounded away on stretchers. It was outside his
official work and I give him all credit and respect for the help he gave
us. But one N.C.O. in the Battery, with the plain speaking that comes
naturally in the face of common danger, said to him, "Well, Sir, we
never thought much of you before, either as a man or as a preacher, but
we're glad to see you here to-day doing your bit."

The Austrian gunners had a fine sense of discrimination in their
targets. The wooden hut, in which I and two of my brother officers used
to sleep, had been hit two or three times that day, and much of our kit
had been destroyed. So had both volumes of Morley's _Rousseau_, which
were on a shelf over my bed, leaving behind only a few torn and
scattered pages. Much damage had also been done to a collection of
Pompeian photographs of great historical interest. But Baedeker's
_Northern Italy_, which lay alongside, had not been touched!

* * * * *

The God of Battles also discriminates delicately. He takes the best and
leaves the worst behind. There died that day, struck by a shell at the
foot of our tree O.P. on Cima del Taglio, one of the finest
personalities in the Battery, a signalling Bombardier who had worked for
some years on a railway in America and, just before the war, as a
railway clerk in the Midlands. He was the father of a young family,
thoughtful and capable, and loyal without subservience to those of