Conspicuous in his khaki among this spate of Italian gray, stood an
English soldier contentedly munching dry brown bread. The motor-bicycle
at his side indicated him as a despatch-rider belonging to one of the
batteries. It would have been hard to say whether machine or man was the
more travel-stained. The cycle's front wheel was badly bent, evidently
by some collision; the soldier's hand was bound with a dirty rag, and
his face clotted with the blood of a congealed scratch, the result of
having been pushed off the road by a motor-lorry in the dark and falling
head-long down a stone embankment. Yet about both mount and man there
was still an air of efficiency and unimpaired fundamental soundness that
was encouraging, and the mud-plastered figure saluted the English
officer at my side with a flick of the wrist that would have passed on
the parade-ground at Wellington Barracks. Two guns of his battery, he
reported, were three or four miles back down the road; the men were
dead-beat, but the worst was that they had had nothing to eat for
thirty-six hours, owing to the tractor that had their rations on board
catching fire and burning them; they had picked up scraps of bread that
other troops had dropped, and some of them had tried and appreciated
cutlets from a dead mule; they needed food to restore their strength for
they had been working hard without sleep for two days and nights. It had
been forty-eight hours of continuous hauling on those heavy guns, which
were constantly getting edged off the road by other traffic, and which
had to be unhitched every time the tractor stopped because it was so
overloaded that it would not start with the full weight of its tow. So
the officer had sent him on ahead to scout for food, and he had just
found a _sosistenza_ where they had given him a sack of bread to take
back.

"You all right yourself?" asked my officer-companion.