Engineers, which entitles them to rank easily first among the engineers of the great European Armies.[1] Before the war this road had been in parts a mere mule track, in parts non-existent.  We went through a number of little Alpine villages, Crosara, Tortima, Fontanelli, Rubbio.  We had soon risen more than three thousand feet above the plain, which lay far beneath, spread out gloriously like a richly coloured carpet, green, white and brown, through which ran two broad, twisting, silver threads, the rivers Brenta and Astico.  There had been more than a hundred bends in the road up to this point, but the gradient was never uncomfortably steep.  Snow lay thick on the higher levels and the pine and fir trees were all snow-crowned.  Sometimes the road ran along the edge of rocky gorges, dropping sheer for hundreds of feet below, with a great mountain wall on the other hand rising sheer above us.  The air grew perceptibly colder as we mounted higher.

[Footnote 1:  I have seen it stated, by an impartial authority, that there has been no roadmaking in war time to compare with that of the Italians on the Alpine and the Isonzo Fronts and in Albania, since the Napoleonic wars.  A distinguished British engineer, with great experience of roadmaking in many countries, has also told me that in his opinion the Swedes are the best roadmakers in the world, the Italians a close second, and the rest of the world some way behind.]

We turned out of view of the plain over undulating snow fields and down a long valley and came out on a small plateau, screened by a gradual ridge from the eyes of the enemy.  Here we provisionally chose a Battery position close to a small solitary house, known as Casa Girardi, on the edge of a pine wood.  All round Italian guns were firing in the snow.  We went on to Col. d’Astiago, which would be our probable O.P.  The summit commanded a wonderful view of the high mountains to the northward, Longara and Fior, Columbara and Meletta di Gallio, and the sheer rock face of the Brenta gorge, and the stream far below, and the great mass of the Grappa rising beyond.

As we came down, lorry loads of Italian troops passed us going up, Alpini, Bersaglieri, Arditi and men of the 152nd Infantry Regiment.  They cheered us wildly as they passed, waving their caps and crying, “Avanti!  Avanti!  Viva l’Inghilterra!  Viva gli Alleati!” And as the string of lorries turned round and round the spiral curves of the road, now high above us, they were cheering and waving still, until they disappeared from view.

* * * * *

The Battery ate their Christmas dinner at San Martino, though the air had been thick with talk of an immediate move.  On this, as on other, occasions the Major made an excellent speech, in the course of which he said:  “You will be going very soon into a place where, before this war, no one would have dreamed that Siege Artillery could go.  You were the first British Battery to be in action in Italy,