h do not produce large, obvious and quick returns. We
fired many hundred rounds in the Trentino and I have no doubt that they
were tolerably effective. But most of them were fired at night, with no
observation possible, and we were often restricted in our registrations
by daylight to four rounds a section per target, from which no really
reliable conclusions could be drawn.[1]

[Footnote 1: We could get no help from Italian range tables, which were
not merely for different guns and ammunition, but were drawn up on
different principles from our own.]

* * * * *

We were billeted in the village of Tiarno di Sotto, where the Mayor
under the Austrian regime, an Italian by race, was still carrying on his
duties. "But I shall have to disappear, if the Austrians ever come
back," he said with a smile. It was a tremendous climb from our billets
to get anywhere, the least tremendous being to our Battery position,
straight up the nearest mountain side. A very active and energetic man
could get up in a quarter of an hour. It used to take me twenty minutes.
The weather, moreover, was hot, though considerably cooler than on the
plains.

Some Czecho-Slovaks were billeted in the next house to ours, but, owing
to lack of a common language, we were unfortunately unable to talk to
them. They were well-built fellows, and gave one an impression of great
tenacity and intelligence. And I know that they were fine fighters. But
they had not the gaiety of the Italians, partly perhaps because they
were exiles in a strange land, and must so remain till the day of final
victory, which might then have seemed still infinitely remote. An
amusing incident happened one evening. Four officers had deserted from
the Austrian lines and surrendered to the Czecho-Slovaks; it was one of
their military functions to induce surrenders. Two of these officers
were themselves Czecho-Slovaks, the third a Jugo-Slav and the fourth an
Italian from Istria. They were very hungry and were in the midst of a
good meal, in the presence of a Czecho-Slovak guard, when a Corporal and
two gunners from our Battery, passing outside the house and hearing some
language being spoken within, which they recognised to be neither
English not Italian, rightly thought it their duty to enter and
investigate the matter. The deserters were astonished to see these
unfamiliar looking persons, speaking a strange tongue and wearing a
uniform which they had never