Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

THE SON OF THE REGIMENT. 95
consternation. Finally, as good fortune willed it, followed by
about thirty soldiers, who had to file one by one among a row
of carts and the last houses of the place, I got out into the
open country, on the road leading to Goito.
I found my battalion
again, reduced to a little more than two hundred soldiers,
and with these I resumed my march. Little by
little it
grew very dark ;
we could not see before or around us ;
half of
the road was filled with artillery and provender wagons, which
stopped every now and then, so that it was all one could do to
avoid breaking his head against points of the bars, and to keep
his feet from under the wheels. There were ditches on the
right and the left of the road ;
mile-stones and heaps of stones
at every step ;
from time to time carts overturned in the middle
of the road, bags opened, and every kind of provision
spread about within short distances of each other the commis-
;
sary cart at a standstill, on it a small light, and around it a
crowd of soldiers who blocked the way of the persons coming
up. From time to time there was some major or staff-officer
who came upon us when we least expected it, and ill-luck to
him who was not quick in getting out of the way. On all sides
there were groups of soldiers who obliged the others to walk
zigzag ;
at every moment gunstocks which came within an ace
of putting out our eyes, and great knocks from those who had
fallen asleep. There was a dense and continuous cloud of
dust, which filled our eyes and mouths ;
a continuous shouting
of artillerymen against the civilian wagoners, who, quite dazed
in the midst of that confusion, unluckily filled up the road ;
an
angry screaming of the officers, who were trying in vain to get
together the remains of their own squads ;
soldiers who continually
crossed from the fields to the road and from the road to