detachments were at work with drag ropes, lowering, guiding and hauling,
and the monotonous cry, that every Siege Gunner knows so well, "On the
ropes--together--heave!" went echoing round those rocks till 2 a.m. next
morning.

* * * * *

This new position of ours was only three hundred yards from the
Austrians, though we had between us and them the river Vippacco and a
high hill, a spur of that on which the ruined monastery of S. Grado di
Merna stood. The trenches here ran on either side of the Vippacco. An
Italian Trench Mortar Battery had been here before us and, it was said,
had been shelled out. But our gun pits, blasted out of the hillside,
were almost completely protected against hostile fire, except perhaps
from guns on S. Marco, which might, with a combination of good luck and
good shooting, have got us in enfilade. Only howitzers capable of
employing high-angle fire could usefully occupy such a position, and, as
it was, our shells could not clear the crest except at pretty large
elevations. It resulted that we could not hit any targets within a
considerable distance of the Austrian front line, but this, we were
told, did not matter. We were here, we were informed, "for a special
purpose" and for action against distant targets only. There was an
orchard on the flat just behind our guns, a little oasis of fertility in
that barren land, and wooden crosses marking the graves of some of the
Italian Trench Mortar Gunners, who had preceded us.

Italian Field Artillery were in position all around us, and were firing
a good deal by night. For the first few nights, with their guns popping
off all round, and with blasting operations in full swing, an almost
continuous echo travelled round and round the stony hillsides and made