We all walked in
single file, keeping as far as possible to a strip of soft mud at the
side of the line where the going was easier, and one's whole mind had
become before long entirely concentrated on nothing more than the
increasing soreness of two tired feet and the gradual development of a
blister on a big toe. From Portogruaro onward, however, my own personal
luck changed, and by getting one lift after another I reached Padua the
same night.
[Sidenote: British guns wait to cross.]
[Sidenote: An Italian colonel attempts to keep order on the bridge.]
[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.
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