ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 57, 5 September 1917, Page 8

ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

BRITISH AMBULANCE WORK

SOME INTERESTING PARTICU 5 LARS.

A New Zealander in a British Bed Cross Ambulance Unit serving with the Italian Army writes graphically of the difficulties which have to be surmounted in saving the lives of the Italian wounded. The following extracts from the letter are taken from the Christchurch Sun-.— "I am away up in the Camic Alps— look at your map for Talmezzo, and then due north of that, right on the frontier, you will see a tiny village, so dirty and tumble-down, called Timau. That is my present resting-place. It is away np in the never-never land of Italy, miles from a railway, nestling in the mountains, and, before the war, was approached practically by mule tracks, which the Italian engineers have now c formed, some of them, into roads of a, more or less passable character. We are about 1000 metres behind the lines, but the line of trenches is on the frontier, and the frontier runs along the mountain tops 7000 to 10,000 feet high, among the ice and snows. Only now, the end of April, is the snow beginning to disappear from our valley; Up to, 10 days ago the weather had been awful, snow, sleet, and mud, but since then we have had glorious weather. The snow is fast melting, and, a true sign of spring, the swallows have come back and the lower slopes of the hills are covered with white, mauve, and yellow crocuses, and snowdrops, a regular carpet of them in sunny places. Hero the armies are neither advancing nor retreating, merely holding the frontier, and, of course, doing one another as much damage as possible, 'strafing'—the big guns do most of tho work. I had a good experience recently. One of the officers was going back to the trenches, and asked me to get leave to go with him, which I was glad to do. We started at 8 a.m. on mules, and got up to the 'commando' by 10.30. There we left the mules and had an hour]s hard climb over the.ice and snow to their line of trench, 7800 feet up. It is marvellous what the engineers have, accomplished. These trenches hold the top o f ]Vlt. , and 300 feet below the top, you enter galleries cut through the frozen snow and ice and rock. The whole interior is a maze of these galleries, connected by steps cut in the ice, or by ladders.

"YOU NEVER SEE THE FRONT."

"Perched right on the top, but on the reverse side of the mountain to the trench, you come upon the little cabins where the officers sleep, just like a ship's cabin, and then the little mess-room where 10 of us sat down to lunch. After lunch I donned a steel helmet and went into the trenches. The Austrian trench is 50 yards away on the slope below, so close that in looking through our shield peep-holes you can see through theirs. You never see the enemy. You have just .to aim at peep-holes, because it is behind them the sentries stand. We went along to the machine-gun section. The Austrians sent over some bombs, and of course replied to our rifle shots, and also the Italian guns were peppering the trenches 250 yards ciway, and it was pleasant watching the shells burst, some in the Austrian trench and many quite close. The Austrian guns were not firing at us. They had their innings the day before. "Now you will wonder how the supplies of munitions are all brought up to these positions, and how the wounded are brought down, etc. All supplies are brought by motor-vans as far as possible, and then packed on mules, of which there are hundreds, and sent up the aerial tramways from the valleys to the receiving stations near the mountain 'tops, and from there everything has to be carried by man-power. Tho wounded, and dead are carried down to tho aerial ways, and from there sent down by cages, where we take them (the wounded only) in our ambulances to the field hospitals. Their wounds are there 'Iressed and they are sent down the valley in big ambulances to the base hospitals. For some things I like the work better than in France. The country and the air are beautiful, but it can be cold. 1 don't know how many degrees of freezing, but the hot water in your radiator will freeze in ho.lf-an-b.our, so you have to be very careful.

"SPRING, IS COMING."

"But the spring is coming now, and I have noticed a lot of swallows about during the last few days, and the weather has been simply glorious. I feel as fit as a fiddle, and can do any amount of work. Yesterday, going up to the trenches, I had a climb ' a good deal worse than our climb up the Hochstetter Dome, and many, many times as hard as our Te Anau-Milford Sound walk.

"The Italian officers are awfully good to us, from the colonels down to the youngsters. A few speak French—badly; a few English—worse; and I have succeeded in mastering a. few Italian words and phrases, so you can imagine our convivialities are provocative of much chaffing and laughter. But they are.an awfully good lot. , I have never met a surly look or anything but a pleasant greeting from anyone here.. We hold honorary officers' rank, which gives us some standing, apart from being 'Inglesi,' whom the Italians admire and like.

"You would smile to see some of the buildings we mess in—an average cowshed in New Zealand is a palace to it."