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The Italians at Bay: Padua

Finding the way to reach Padua.

Walking single file through the mud.

This news of the existence of a sosistenza was good hearing. I myself had not the least idea of how to get to Padua, the nearest place from which I could hope to send a telegram, except by walking there; and Padua was sixty miles along the railway-line. Two days' walking, two brown loaves the gift of the Italian officer in charge of the bread-depot, and a stick of chocolate; it was a prospect of no allurement. I stepped into place in the long trail of refugees and started, however. It needed no more than two hours of stumbling over sleepers and crunching on the rough stone ballast of the track to make of me as tired and dull-witted a hobo as the rest. 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.

British guns wait to cross.

An Italian colonel attempts to keep order on the bridge. A panie is started.

Austrian aeroplanes are overhead.

Italian officers check panic.

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. Then suddenly one of these things happened to which an army in retreat is peculiarly liable. How it started no one seems to know. One theory is that Austrian soldiers dressed in Italian uniforms had been hurried on ahead by the enemy to mingle with the retreat and spread such panics. What actually happened was that several men galloped up all at once on horseback shouting, "The Austrians are here." Immediately the crowd, hitherto patiently waiting its turn to cross the bridge, made one simultaneous push toward its opening. Beyond the river there was the whole country-side to scatter over; on this side they could expect no other fate than to be caught helplessly in a trap. It was like a stampede in a burning theater; the desperate eagerness of every person in the crowd to get on the bridge stopped almost any one from getting there. Carts and people at the edge of the road were shoved down the embankment by the weight of the dense mass surging along its center. And then to add to the terror of the moment there was heard above the shouts and oaths of the struggling mob a low, foreboding hum, the characteristic drone of Austrian aeroplanes. It is hard to see what could have come of the situation but complete and bloody disaster if it had not been for the decided action of some Italian officers. By main force they thrust into the middle of the entrance to the bridge and checked the panic with sheer personal determination. The sound of their authoritative voices brought back the sense of discipline that had momentarily gone. 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.

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.

Germans try to cross the upper course of Tagliamento. 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. There is a bridge a few miles west of the town of Gemona which was not being used by the retreating army because of its comparatively flimsy construction. The Tagliamento, then very high, was, like many mountain streams, subject to very rapid rises and falls. Therefore, part of the enemy advance-guard, which was following up the Italian retirement was pushed on ahead to try to obtain control of this bridge at Gemona, for use at any rate when the waters had sunk a little. This German detachment forced its way across the bridge with considerable courage, some of them being swept away by the swift stream pouring over it, but on the other bank they were immediately faced with stout resistance by the Italian rear-guard, and with their backs to the river virtually all the enemy who had crossed the Tagliamento were killed or captured.

Gallant conduct of the Italian rear-guard.

The gallant and skilful conduct of the rear-guard of the Italian army is, indeed, the brightest part of the gloomy story of the retreat. The Italian armies are on the defensive.

The war now a struggle against invaders.

The cavalry, specially, played a distinguished part in covering the retirement. Charging machine-guns with the lance, and holding commanding positions until they were virtually cut off, these regiments had very heavy losses. A retreat where circumstances make it impossible to get the whole of the army away imposes upon the rear-guard a call for special self-sacrifice, since the moment never comes, when, the whole of the main body being safely past, it can break off the combat and itself retire, its duty done. In the withdrawal of the armies that were along the front in the Cadore and Carnic Alps, occasions of this kind occurred several times during the week throughout which the retreat lasted, when rear-guard detachments were completely surrounded. At Lorenzago a force in this position succeeded in cutting its way back to join the main body again; west of Gemona, however, the remnants of the Thirty-sixth Division were so thoroughly engulfed by the advancing Austro-German forces that, having used up all their ammunition, they were obliged to surrender. And so, gradually, not without moments of discouragement almost amounting to despair, the Italian armies, which ten days before had been fighting on Austrian territory with every prospect of carrying still further a series of victories that had lasted two years and a half, found themselves on the defensive far back of their own borders, awaiting the attack of a triumphant and advancing foe. It had been a terrible trial for them and for the nation at their back. Almost in one night, dreams of imperial expansion, cherished with an enthusiasm that gave them an air of virtual reality, faded into a remoteness beyond reckoning. The war that had been from the first gloriously offensive, was suddenly transformed into an outnumbered struggle against invaders who had already seized half of one of the richest provinces of Italy. Yet, though numbed by the shock and stricken to the heart by the realization of her disaster, Italy reacted well. There was no talk of yielding to be heard, only anxious discussion of the best means of organizing the further resistance that would so soon be necessary. For though the great majority of the Italian army had succeeded for the moment in escaping from the grasp of the Austro-Germans, the enemy was steadfastly pursuing. Encouraged by a victory that must have more than realized his most ambitious hopes, reinforced by captured guns and material, he would wait only long enough to get sufficient strength into position before hurling the whole of his weight once more against the Italian line.

Impossible to meet the second shock on the Tagliamento. To meet this second shock on the Tagliamento was not possible. The river itself quickly became, as the rain stopped and the waters fell, too easily traversable an obstacle to be worth fortifying. The line which it would have imposed upon the Italian army was, moreover, too long to be held in the depth desirable for resistance to the attack of superior numbers. So the Tagliamento was occupied as an intermediate position only long enough to shield the further retreat of the army and its transport behind the broader and deeper stream of the Piave.