the road.]

Gradually the throng at the Latisana bridge increased, and eventually no
less than eleven of the British guns attached to the Italian army were
drawn up at the side of the road waiting their turn to cross. The
English colonel who commanded the group to which they belonged had
arrived and was using the funnel of the bridge to collect his scattered
units. The men refreshed with the bread that they had received from the
Italian food-depot, were resting by the side of the road; an Italian
artillery colonel, under whose command the guns had been when on the
Third Army front as corps artillery, was on the bridge trying to hold up
the onpressing, unbroken string of heterogeneous traffic long enough for
the English guns to be edged into the procession. Then suddenly one of
these things happened to which an army in retreat is peculiarly liable.
How it started no one seems to know. One theory is that Austrian
soldiers dressed in Italian uniforms had been hurried on ahead by the
enemy to mingle with the retreat and spread such panics. What actually
happened was that several men galloped up all at once on horseback
shouting, "The Austrians are here." Immediately the crowd, hitherto
patiently waiting its turn to cross the bridge, made one simultaneous
push toward its opening. Beyond the river there was the whole
country-side to scatter over; on this side they could expect no other
fate than to be caught helplessly in a trap. It was like a stampede in a
burning theater; the desperate eagerness of every person in the crowd to
get on the bridge stopped almost any one from getting there. Carts and
people at the edge of the road were shoved down the embankment by the
weight of the dense mass surging along its center. And then to add to
the terror of the moment there was heard above the shouts and oaths of
the struggling mob a low, foreboding hum, the characteristic drone of
Austrian aeroplanes. It is hard to see what could have come of the
situation but complete and bloody disaster if it had not been for the
decided action of some Italian officers. By main force they thrust into
the middle of the entrance to the bridge and checked the panic with
sheer personal determination. The sound of their authoritative voices
brought back the sense of discipline that had momentarily gone. Under
their orders the pushing throng sorted itself into some order. A jibing
mule was summarily shot to clear the road, and so in a few minutes,
despi