them were many Italian Engineers and bridging
detachments with great numbers of pontoons. Beyond Treviso all troop
movements took place at night, and our defensive (and offensive)
measures against aircraft were apparently sufficient to prevent the
enemy from getting any clear idea of what was going on. It seems that he
expected an attack in the mountains, but not on the plain. The Italian
High Command, on the other hand, considered that the relative strength
and morale of the opposing Armies was now such that we could attack on
the plain without fear of a successful counter-attack in the mountains,
and that, the attack on the plain once well under way, we could pass to
the offensive in the mountains also. This view of things was justified
by the events which followed. Two British Divisions were moved down to
the plain, and one was left in the mountains. The Heavy Artillery was
divided proportionately and, of my own Brigade, one Battery was left in
the mountains but the rest moved down.

Our new Battery position lay between the ruined village of Lovadina and
the river Piave, about three-quarters of a mile from the nearer bank.
There was a farmhouse, not much knocked about, close to the gun pits
and, with the aid of a few tents erected out of sight along a shallow
ditch, the whole Battery was very tolerably billeted. Another British
Battery was less than a hundred yards in rear of us, and two others not
far away on our right flank. We were once more in a land of acacia
hedges, beginning now to take on their autumn tints. For miles round us
the country was dead flat. Beyond the river we could see, on a little
rise, what was left of Susegana Castle, near to Conegliano, and on a
higher, longer ridge further away the white _campanile_ of San Daniele
del Friuli, above Udine. It was there that, almost a year ago, in the
first newspaper I saw after the retreat, I had read that Italian
rearguards were still fighting. In the far distance rose great mountain
masses. Up there were Feltre and Belluno, and behind, just visible when
the light was very bright, the peaks of Carnia and the Cadore.

It was an unaccustomed feeling, after months of comparative immunity
from observation behind mountain ridges, to be in flat country again. At
first we all felt a queer sense of insecurity whenever we walked about,
even when thick hedges manifestly screened us from enemy eyes. But the
road from Lovadina to the river bank at Palazzon, which ran r