The 6th of August was fixed for the first day of the attack from Anzac; the landing at Suvla was to take place during the dark hours of the night of the 6th-7th. "The 6th was both the earliest and the latest date possible for the battle, the earliest, because it was the first by which the main part of the reinforcements would be ready, the latest, because of the moon." Both in the preparation and the surprise of this attack dark nights were essential. [Illustration: A "long focus" view taken over the top of our trenches at Anzac] Sir Ian Hamilton's Despatch (reprinted from the London _Gazette_ of Tuesday, the 4th January, 1916) shows that this battle of the 6th-10th August was perhaps the strangest and most difficult battle ever planned by mortal general. It was to be a triple battle, fought by three separated armies, not in direct communication with each other. There was no place from which the battle, as a whole, could be controlled, nearer than the island of Imbros, (fourteen miles from any part of the Peninsula) to which telegraphic cables led from Anzac and Cape Helles. The left wing of our army, designed for the landing at Suvla, was not only not landed, when the battle began, but not concentrated. There was no adjacent subsidiary base big enough (or nearly big enough) to hold it. "On the day before the battle, part were at Imbros, part at Mudros, and part at Mitylene ... separated respectively by 14, 60, and 120 miles of sea from the arena into which they were simultaneously to appear." The vital part of the fight was to be fought by troops from Anzac. The Anzac position was an open book to every Turk aeroplane and every observer on Sari Bair. The reinforcements for this part of the battle had to be landed in the dark, some days before the battle, and kept hidden underground, during daylight, so that the Turks should not see them and suspect what was being planned. In all wars, but especially in modern wars, great tactical combinations have been betrayed by very little things. In war, as in life, the unusual thing, however little, betrays the unusual thing, however great. An odd bit of paper round some cigars betrayed the hopes of the American Secession, some litter in the sea told Nelson where the French fleet was, one man rising up in the grass by a roadside saved the wealth of Peru from the hands of Drake. The Turks were always expecting an attack from Anzac. It is not too much to say that they searched the Anzac position hourly for the certain signs of an attack, reinforcements and supplies. They had not even to search the whole position for these signs, since there was only one place (towards Fisherman's Hut) where they could be put. If they had suspected that men and stores were being landed, they would have guessed at once, that a thrust was to be made, and our attacks upon their flanks would have met with a prepared defence. [Illustration: Australians at work at Anzac two days before the evacuation took place]