or a big
attack would be the moment when the enemy was in the act of retiring
voluntarily to his _Winterstellung_, necessarily a somewhat difficult
and risky operation.

Meanwhile the enemy guns were not silent. They were indeed unpleasantly
active, constantly sweeping the road just behind our Battery, putting
down violent, though brief, concentrations on the cross roads at Pria
dell' Acqua, less than a hundred yards to our right, and apparently also
endeavouring to carry out occasional counter-battery shoots after our
own pattern. The British Batteries in this sector suffered a number of
casualties during this period, and one in particular, not my own, was
frequently shelled with great precision by twelve-inch howitzers, most
disagreeable weapons, firing at extreme ranges from the cover of some
distant valley. Many efforts were made to locate these particular guns,
but I am not confident that any of them were successful. Among the
victims in this Battery was Preece, a young officer who had served under
me in a Training Battery in England. He was the only son of a widowed
mother, and, had he lived, might have become a world-famous chemist. His
grave, too, is in the Baerenthal Valley.

Our own officers' Mess had several narrow escapes, especially on one
occasion when the impact of an enemy shell was broken by a trench cart
and a box of tools, only seven or eight yards away. None of the tools
were ever found again and portions of the trench cart were seen next
morning hanging on the telephone wires beside the road. Only a few
splinters came into the Mess and did no harm, all the occupants, myself
included, warned by the sound of the approaching shell, having flung
ourselves face downwards on the floor. Another frequent exercise of the
enemy at this time was night bombing, which during the full moon became
somewhat serious. But a big raid by our own airmen on the enemy
aerodrome at Borgo in the Val Sugana put an end to this source of
trouble.

I was able now and then to make short expeditions down the mountains in
the Battery car to Thiene, and sometimes even to Vicenza, for the
ostensible purpose of buying canteen and mess stores and drawing the
Battery pay. Thiene is the ugliest and dullest little town in Italy. But
Vicenza, with its exquisite Olympian theatre, and other fine Palladian
architecture, varied by many smaller buildings which are beautiful
examples of the Venetian Gothic style, with its busy and animated