I had been told that there were some huts on the right hand side, just over the bridge, where our men would be, where the A.S.C. would have delivered rations and the Staff had fixed a rendezvous.  I, therefore, expected to find the Major and our dismounted party, or at least someone from another Battery, or some of either Raven’s or the General’s Staff.  But there was nothing there; no British troops, no rations, and no Staff!  Only the never ending rain, and a confused stream of Italian troops, chiefly Field Guns, hurrying across the bridge.

There was nothing to do but to go back.  The sentries on the bridge tried to stop me, but I insisted that I must see some Artillery officer in authority.  They directed me to the Square, where I found Colonel Canale, controlling the movements of Batteries, looking straight before him out of uncomprehending, heavy eyes, like one crushed under a weight of bitter humiliation.  He asked where our guns were.  I told him they were getting near now, but stuck fast in the traffic.  He said it was forbidden to let through traffic on that road at present, but he would do what he could.  I asked if there were any new orders.  “No,” he said, “only forward across the bridge, and then push on as fast as possible to Portogruaro.”  I left him, and found three of our stragglers from the Major’s party, asleep on the floor of a forge.  I told them to cross the river and wait on the Portogruaro road for myself and the guns.  I asked an Italian Corporal if there was anywhere in Latisana where one could get a drink.  He said he thought not, but gave me a bottle full of cold coffee, brandy and sugar in about equal proportions.  It was a splendid drink, but a little too sweet.

I walked back along the road towards the guns.  Some houses on the outskirts of the town were burning furiously.  The traffic was beginning to move forward along our road, very slowly and with frequent halts.  I had two overcoats with me when we started from Pec.  Both were long ago wet through, and I was wearing over my shoulders at this time a blanket lent to me by Medola.  This, too, was thoroughly drenched by now.  In the fields on either side of the road Infantry were lying out in the rain, asleep, dreaming, perhaps, of Rome or Sicily or the Bay of Naples.  The dawn of another day was breaking, cold, damp and miserable, symbolic of this great weary tragedy.

* * * * *

I had not gone far when I met four of our men carrying on a stretcher the dead body of the Battery Staff Sergeant Artificer.  He had dropped asleep on one of the guns and, as the tractor moved on, he had fallen forward, head downwards, beneath the gun wheel, which had passed over him, along the whole length of his body, crushing him to death.  They said he died before they could get him out.  He was a good man and a very skilled worker, full of pluck and spirit.  The last thing he had done for me was to get everything ready for rendering the guns unserviceable in case we should have to abandon them.  There was no chance of decent burial for him here, but I had his body placed upon an empty trench cart, which was being towed by a lorry of another Battery, and put two of our men in charge of it.  They buried him the next day or the day after in a cemetery near Portogruaro.