[Sidenote: A panic is started.]

[Sidenote: Austrian aeroplanes are overhead.]

[Sidenote: Italian officers check panic.]

[Sidenote: Airplane opens fire on the road.]

Gradually the throng at the Latisana bridge increased, and eventually no
less than eleven of the British guns attached to the Italian army were
drawn up at the side of the road waiting their turn to cross. The
English colonel who commanded the group to which they belonged had
arrived and was using the funnel of the bridge to collect his scattered
units. The men refreshed with the bread that they had received from the
Italian food-depot, were resting by the side of the road; an Italian
artillery colonel, under whose command the guns had been when on the
Third Army front as corps artillery, was on the bridge trying to hold up
the onpressing, unbroken string of heterogeneous traffic long enough for
the English guns to be edged into the procession. Then suddenly one of
these things happened to which an army in retreat is peculiarly liable.
How it started no one seems to know. One theory is that Austrian
soldiers dressed in Italian uniforms had been hurried on ahead by the
enemy to mingle with the retreat and spread such panics. What actually
happened was that several men galloped up all at once on horseback
shouting, "The Austrians are here." Immediately the crowd, hitherto
patiently waiting its turn to cross the bridge, made one simultaneous
push toward its opening. Beyond the river there was the whole
country-side to scatter over; on this side they could expect no other
fate than to be caught helplessly in a trap. It was like a stampede in a