Excerpt from ATTACKS
By Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

Night fell. The retreat of the enemy from Longarone toward Fae had ceased shortly after our passage of the river. Italian artillery delivered rapid fire in the vicinity of our crossing of the Piave channel. The enemy probably knew that the road to Belluno had been blocked. He had surely seen the eight hundred prisoners and the Rommel detachment crossing from bank to bank in the evening twilight. What did he have up his sleeve? A breakthrough attempt in the night? I had to anticipate him.

The heavy machine-gun platoon at Dogna was, from time to time, still delivering harassing fire on the road and rail bridges near Pirago as well as on the open road cut one hundred yards north of that town. I now had a telephone message sent ordering them to cease fire since the detachment itself would be advancing along the road toward Longarone.
We moved off to the north. I led the point. The column moved in the following order: The light machine gunners marched on the right-hand side of the road with their weapons loaded for steady fire; in the ditch on the left were the riflemen in column of files at ten-yard intervals. The companies followed in columns of files. The detachment staff was at their head. We moved as quietly as possible for hostile sentries had excellent audibility on that clear and quiet night.

In spite of all precautions, the point was fired on by an Italian sentry three hundred yards south of Pirago. In the pitch-black night we saw the flashes of a few shots; then my light machine gun on the right hammered away. Its fire struck sparks from the road, a house wall to the right, and the steep rocks on the left of the road. The enemy did not answer for he had been swept away.