ll that night the snow came down in
clouds, but the next day, and the next few following, were very fine.
The sun shone all day long from a cold, cloudless sky upon a waste of
flashing snow, with here and there trees sticking out of it, and strange
red morning lights in the sky behind it, and sweeping winds across it,
and in the sunset the white hillsides slowly changed to a mauve pink. It
was a scene of wonderful beauty. But the temperature was ten degrees
below zero one day at noon, and the next day twenty-four below zero at 9
a.m. and nine above zero at noon.

These conditions were disconcerting to good shooting, the lower
temperatures not having been contemplated by those who compiled our
range table in England. But we got all four guns satisfactorily
registered by the second day, to the evident pleasure of the Italian
Colonel under whose command we were temporarily placed. This man had a
somewhat ferocious appearance and a reputation for great rudeness, both
to his superiors and his subordinates in the military hierarchy. It was
said that, but for this, he would long ago have been a General. To us,
however, he showed his politer side, patting the Major on the back and
repeating several times "buon sistema, buon sistema!"

The physical discomfort of those early days was great, but we were full
of buoyancy and health. Everything froze hard during the night, one's
boots, one's clothing, if damp when taken off, the ink in one's fountain
pen. In the morning water poured into a basin froze hard in a couple of
minutes and the lather froze on one's face before one had time to shave.
The Major, breaking through one of the most fundamental traditions of
the British Army, announced that no one need shave more than once in
three days. The morning after our arrival we had a discouraging
breakfast. No fire could be got to burn and no tea had been made. There
was nothing to eat except a few very hard ration biscuits and some eggs
boiled hard the night before, and now frozen through and through. One
cracked the shell and found icicles beneath, and miserably held
fragments of egg in one's mouth until they thawed!

But gradually, by patient work and organisation, these early troubles
were surmounted. The whole Battery had been provided with Italian
greatcoats and other Italian mountain equipment,--white Alpine boots
lined with fur, alpenstocks, spiked snow grips, which could be fastened
on to one's boots like skates, and white clo