ssitated by the great shortage of officers. My own Major used to
train all our best N.C.O.'s with this object in view and, when satisfied
of their competence, used to give them in normal times considerable
responsibilities in the working of the Battery in action. The result was
that we had as capable and reliable a set of "Numbers One" and
"B.C.A.'s" as could be found anywhere.[1] The men thoroughly appreciated
the amount of trust reposed in them and never failed us. Furthermore,
when I joined the Battery there was hardly a man who was not a trained
specialist, either as a Signaller, Gunlayer or B.C.A.

[Footnote 1: A "Number One" is the Sergeant or other N.C.O. in charge of
a gun and its detachment when in action. A "B.C.A." (or Battery
Commander's Assistant) assists the officer on duty in the Command Post
in locating points on the map, in making numerical calculations, and in
other miscellaneous duties.]

Seventeen months later, only the Major, Leary and myself, out of the
officers in the Battery when I joined, still remained with it, and
death, wounds, sickness, promotion and commissions from the ranks had
taken from us many of our best N.C.O.'s and men. But through all the
varied experiences of those long months, there had been a continuity of
tradition and an unchanging spirit. We were still, for me and for many,
the First British Battery in Italy.

PART III

THE ITALIAN SUMMER OFFENSIVE, 1917

CHAPTER XIV

THE OFFENSIVE OPENS

On the 18th of August I got up at half-past four in the morning. There
was a mist in the air, which cleared away as the day grew warmer. The
big bombardment in what the journalists called the Twelfth Battle of the
Isonzo began at six o'clock and went on continuously all day. Once the
thing was started, I had little to do except to change occasionally the
rate of fire,--"_lento_," "_normale_," "_vivace_," "_celere_" and
"_double vivace_" by turns. The first part of the day I was in charge of
the Right Section of the Battery and sat most of the time on a wooden
bench at a table under a tarpaulin among the acacias. By my side sat a
telephonist in communication with the Battery Command Post, some four
hundred yards away to the left, beyond the Left Section. My only other
apparatus was a megaphone, a notebook and pencil, and a pipe.
Occasionally I would go and stand by one of the guns, to check the
gun-laying and to see that the guns were recoiling and coming up again
without undue v