On some carts the women sat huddled from the rain and others walked beside the carts keeping as close to them as they could.
There were dogs now in the column, keeping under the wagons as they moved along.
The road was muddy, the ditches at the side were high with water and beyond the trees that lined the road the fields looked too wet and too soggy to try to cross.
I got down from the car and worked up the road a way, looking for a place where I could see ahead to find a side-road we could take across country.
I knew there were many side-roads but did not want one that would lead to nothing.
I could not remember them because we had always passed them bowling along in the car on the main road and they all looked much alike.
Now I knew we must find one if we hoped to get through.
No one knew where the Austrians were nor how things were going but I was certain that if the rain should stop and planes come over and get to work on that column that it would be all over.
All that was needed was for a few men to leave their trucks or a few horses be killed to tie up completely the movement on the road.
The rain was not falling so heavily now and I thought it might clear.
I went ahead along the edge of the road and when there was a small road that led off to the north between two fields with a hedge of trees on both sides, I thought that we had better take it and hurried back to the cars.
I told Piani to turn off and went back to tell Bonello and Aymo.
"If it leads nowhere we can turn around and cut back in," I said.
"What about these?" Bonello asked.
His two sergeants were beside him on the seat.
They were unshaven but still military looking in the early morning.
"They'll be good to push," I said.
I went back to Aymo and told him we were going to try it across country.
"What about my virgin family?" Aymo asked.
The two girls were asleep.
"They won't be very useful," I said. "You ought to have some one that could push."
"They could go back in the car," Aymo said. "There's room in the car."
"All right if you want them," I said. "Pick up somebody with a wide back to push."
"Bersaglieri," Aymo smiled. "They have the widest backs.
They measure them.
How do you feel, Tenente?"
"Fine.
How are you?"
"Fine.
But very hungry."
"There ought to be something up that road and we will stop and eat."
"How's your leg, Tenente?"
"Fine," I said.
Standing on the step and looking up ahead I could see Piani's car pulling out onto the little side-road and starting up it, his car showing through the hedge of bare branches.
Bonello turned off and followed him and then Piani worked his way out and we followed the two ambulances ahead along the narrow road between hedges.
It led to a farmhouse.
We found Piani and Bonello stopped in the farmyard.
The house was low and long with a trellis with a grape-vine over the door.
There was a well in the yard and Piani was getting up water to fill his radiator.
So much going in low gear had boiled it out.
The farmhouse was deserted.
I looked back down the road, the farmhouse was on a slight elevation above the plain, and we could see over the country, and saw the road, the hedges, the fields and the line of trees along the main road where the retreat was passing.
The two sergeants were looking through the house.
The girls were awake and looking at the courtyard, the well and the two big ambulances in front of the farmhouse, with three drivers at the well.
One of the sergeants came out with a clock in his hand.
"Put it back," I said.
He looked at me, went in the house and came back without the clock.
"Where's your partner?" I asked.
"He's gone to the latrine." He got up on the seat of the ambulance.
He was afraid we would leave him.