isibly working, triumphing over
tremendous natural difficulties. We passed, too, a party of about fifty
men hauling up on long ropes a heavy drilling engine, the sort of labour
of which British fatigue parties have, luckily for themselves, no
experience. Mists came down from the mountains as we descended, and
rainstorms threatened, but did not break.

CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING AT GORIZIA

On the first day in August I had been doing some observation at S.
Andrea in the afternoon, and, this duty over, I got permission to walk
into Gorizia and visit the section of the British Red Cross stationed
there, several of whose members I knew. It is a longer walk than one
would think, for S. Andrea is practically a southern suburb of Gorizia,
which, however, straggles over a large area of country. The railway
bridge across the Isonzo is broken down by shell fire and so are two
other bridges,--all three of stone,--but these could be soon repaired,
if we made a big advance. It would be wasted labour to repair them now,
for the Austrians would only break them down again. The Italians have
run up a low, broad wooden bridge, sheltered from Austrian view behind
one of the broken stone bridges. From time to time the Austrians hit
this bridge, and then the Italians quickly make it good again. To be
able to cross the Isonzo at this point is a convenience, but not a
military necessity, for all movement of troops and supplies into Gorizia
can be carried out on the left bank of the river and across bridges some
miles further down-stream.

The suburbs of the town were badly knocked about, but the centre was not
at this time much damaged. Gorizia lies in a salient of the hills, with
the Austrians looking down upon it from the tops of most of them. But,
still hoping to win it back, they do not shell it heavily or often.
There are special reasons, too, for their forbearance. For Gorizia is a
sort of Austrian Cheltenham, whither Austrian officers retire in large
numbers to pass their last years in villas which they take over from one
another's widows. So the Austrian officer class has a sort of vested
interest in the preservation of the place. So also have certain Hebrew
Banks in Vienna, which hold mortgages on a great part of the land in and
around the city, which just before the war was being rapidly developed
as a fashionable Spa. It is a well laid out town, with large public
gardens and good buildings, architecturally very like the larger