other Front in this war have stronger positions been carried by assault
than San Michele, Sabotino, Cucco, Vodice, Monte Nero, and, in the end,
Monte Santo. No one who has not seen with his own eyes the heights which
Italian Infantry have conquered, backed by no great Artillery support,
can realise the astounding things which the Italians have performed. The
Italian Infantry have died in masses, with high hearts and in the
exaltation of delirium, crumpled, rent and agonised, achieving the
impossible.

And in the third place I would say something of the work of their
Engineers. Italian Engineers are famous all the world over, but they
have done nothing more magnificent than their swift building of
innumerable roads, broad and well-laid and with marvellously easy
gradients, both in these inhospitable and undeveloped border lands
beside the Isonzo, and along the whole mountain Front. They have made
possible troop movements and a regular system of supply under the most
difficult conditions. It is a work worthy of the descendants of the old
Romans, who by their road building laid the foundations of civilisation
throughout Western Europe. And only second to their road making, I would
place the work of the Italian Engineers in blasting _caverne_ and gun
positions and trenches in the rock, an invaluable and unending labour.

We British Gunners spent our first Italian summer in khaki drill tunics
and shorts[1] and Australian "smasher hats." When these hats were first
issued, one Battery Commander declared them to be "unsoldierly" in
appearance and asked for permission to return them to the Ordnance. But
this was not allowed. The men stood the heat well, though at the
beginning, before they had got accustomed to the change of climate,
there was some dysentery. I myself, a few days after my arrival and
before I had a smasher hat, had a touch of the sun and lay about all day