pied, but we should have done so,
if an offensive had come from our side while we were still on the
Plateau. San Sisto, I was told, was once the centre of a leper
reservation. There is a little chapel there, but no other buildings.
This chapel was used by the R.A.M.C. as a First Aid Post. One day I saw
a shell go clean through the roof of it, but there was no one inside at
the time.

The Battery O.P. was a glorious place, up a tall pine tree on the summit
of Cima del Taglio, a high point to the east of the Granezza--Pria dell'
Acqua road. This O.P. had been built by the French. It was reached by a
strong pinewood ladder, with a small platform half way up as a
resting-place. The O.P. itself consisted of a wooden platform, nailed to
cross pieces, supported on two trees. It was about fifteen feet long and
four feet broad and some ninety feet above the ground. At one end of the
platform a hut had been erected, with a long glass window, opening
outward, on the northern side, and a small fixed glass window on the
western. The other end of the platform was uncovered. When the weather
was bad one could shelter in the hut and imagine oneself out at sea, as
the trees swayed in the wind. The O.P. was well hidden from the enemy by
the branches of the trees. The view was superb. Immediately below the
thick pine forest sloped gradually downwards, the trees still carrying a
heavy weight of snow. Among the trees patches of deep snow were visible,
hiding rocky ground. Beyond lay the Plateau, studded with villages and
isolated houses, with the ruins of Asiago in the centre of the view,
and, to the left of it, the light railway line and its raised
embankment, along which the Austrian trenches ran. And beyond, more
pinewoods on the northern ridge, and beyond, more mountains, one snowy
range behind another, up to the horizon. The visibility was often poor
and variable from one minute to another. Great clouds used to sweep low
over the Plateau, blotting out everything but the nearest trees, and
then sweep past, and Asiago would come into sudden view again, and the
sun would shine forth once more upon the little clusters of white
houses, some utterly wrecked, some mere shells, others as yet hardly
touched by the destruction of war. The prosaic name of this O.P. was
"Claud."

There was another O.P. called Ascot, which we used sometimes to man at
the beginning. It was on, or rather in, Monte Kaberlaba, just behind the
front line, approached t