were thrown, to crash to
death thousands of feet below in the Val di Ledro.

This country was Austrian before the war, though inhabited wholly by
Italians, and Italian troops had conquered it with extraordinary feats
of endurance and daring in their first great onrush all along their old
frontiers in the spring of 1915. But now a big advance here by either
side, in the face of carefully prepared opposition, seemed almost
inconceivable, except as the result of some wide turning movement,
hinging on some point many miles away.

The special military problems presented by warfare in such country were
numerous and difficult. Our guns had to be dragged into position up a
rough mountain track, which at some points was too narrow and at others
too weak to allow the passage of a six-inch howitzer without much
preliminary blasting and building up. Our first gun to go up took
twenty-four hours of continuous labour between the time of starting up
the track and the time of arriving in position, a distance of only about
two miles of zig-zag. No tractor or other power engine could be used
here. The only force available was that of men hauling on drag ropes,
and a party of sixty Italian gunners reinforced our men.

What may be called the problems of pure gunnery were still more
difficult. British Heavy guns had never fired under such conditions
before and, for the benefit of such of my readers as may be practical
Artillerymen, it may be interesting to remark that for one of our
targets the angle of sight, properly so called, worked out at more than
twenty degrees, while the map-range elevation was only about fifteen.
The devising of an accurate formula for correction of elevation for a
large "_dislivello_," as the Italians shortly call it, which in English
means a large "difference of level" between a gun and its target, is one
of the most intricate problems of theoretical gunnery, or, for that
matter, of theoretical mechanics, involving, among other factors, the
various shapes and sizes of projectiles, their comparative steadiness
during flight, the resistance of the air, and the effect of other
atmospheric conditions and of the force of gravity.

There was a splendid opportunity for systematically testing various
rival formulae in the Trentino, but it was allowed to slip. Among
gunners, as among other classes, and especially among Regular Army
gunners, the so-called practical man sees little value in scientific
experiments, whic