Under
their orders the pushing throng sorted itself into some order. A jibing
mule was summarily shot to clear the road, and so in a few minutes,
despite the constant approach of the low-flying enemy aircraft, a way
was cleared for the English guns to cross the bridge. They were scarcely
over when the first Austrian machine, swooping down, dropped bombs and
opened fire with its machine-gun on the tight-packed road. The attack
did not do much damage, though one British Red Cross car was filled as
full of holes as a pepper-pot; but the experience showed how much worse
the retreat would have been had not the heavy rain of the week-end kept
the Austrian airmen in their hangars.
[Sidenote: The army reaches Tagliamento.]
So the retiring army reached the Tagliamento, and completed the first
stage of its retreat. Once behind that barrier the Italians could be
sure of a certain breathing space, but to secure its protection was the
most difficult part of their rearward movement. To the constant
convergence which the lack of more than three bridges rendered necessary
must be attributed much of the confusion of the retirement and the
abandonment of the military equipment that was still to the east of the
Tagliamento when the pressure of the enemy finally compelled their
destruction.
[Sidenote: Germans try to cross the upper course of Tagliamento.]
[Sidenote: Enemies who cross are killed or captured.]
The Germans fully realized the formidable obstacle to the retreat of the
Italians which this rain-swollen river constituted, and they made a
determined effort to secure for themselves a passage across its upper
course while the Second and Third Armies to the south were not yet
behind the stream.
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