The gun positions of my new Battery were situated just outside the
little village of Pec, inhabited mostly by Slovene peasantry before the
war, now all vanished. The village had been much shelled, first by
Italian and then by Austrian guns, and there was not a house remaining
undamaged, though several had been patched up as billets and cookhouses
by British troops. Another of our Batteries had their guns actually in
the ruins of the village, but ours were alongside a sunken road, leading
down to the Vippacco. The guns themselves were concealed in thick bowers
of acacias, the branches of which had been clipped here and there within
our arc of fire. I doubt if anywhere, on any Front, a British Battery
occupied a position of greater natural beauty. The officers' Mess and
sleeping huts were a few hundred yards from the guns, right on the bank
of the Vippacco, likewise hidden from view and shaded from the sun by a
great mass of acacias, a luxuriant soft roof of fresh green leaves. Our
Mess, indeed, had no other roof than this, for there was seldom any
rain, and, as we sat at meals, we faced a broad waterfall, a curving
wall of white foam, stretching right across the stream, which was at
this point about seventy or eighty yards wide. Innumerable blue
dragon-flies flitted backwards and forwards in the sunlight. Though the
weather was warm, it was less hot than usual at this time of year, and
the surroundings of our Mess reminded me vividly of Kerry. In the first
days that followed I could often imagine myself back in beautiful and
familiar places in the south-west corner of Ireland. Only Italian
gunners coming and going, for several of their Battery positions were
close to ours, and the Castello di Rubbia across the water, slightly but
not greatly damaged, broke this occasional illusion.

These Italians took us quite for granted now, and that evening I began
to learn about their Front. Things were pretty quiet at present on both