Heavy sable furs and muffs almost bowed their shoulders;
each finger had two or three rings that flashed in the light; round
their necks were gold chains hung with pendants, and yet, instead of the
air of self-satisfied ostentation that might well have gone with a
display so lavish, there were only two pathetically little, frightened,
perplexed faces, and an uncertain gait that did not promise much further
progress along that ankle-wrenching railway-line.
By this time I had left the train, which had taken thirty hours to cover
fifteen miles, and was walking ahead along the track. There was always
the chance that something might happen to the two bridges farther on
over the Tagliamento, and I wanted to be on the same side of the river
as the telegraph office when that occurred.
[Sidenote: The Tagliamento bridges dominate the retirement.]
These bridges were the feature that dominated the whole movement of
retirement. In military terms, they constituted a defile upon its route.
Everything had to converge upon one of those three narrow passages, and
until they were crossed there was no security for the Italian Army.
Rear-guard actions were, indeed, fought at intermediate places such as
the line of the Torre, west of Udine, where General Petiti di Roreto
made a stand with six brigades, the valley of the Judrio, the heights
above Cormons. But such efforts could do no more than delay the enemy's
advance; the respite that the Italian Army so urgently needed to pull
itself together, to reassemble its units, redistribute its artillery,
and, in short, gather into one hand again the scattered threads of
control, could be found only behind the Tagliamento River, forty miles
back from the old front line.
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