There was only one place in which they could be hidden, and that was under the ground. The Australians had to dig hiding places for them before they came.
In this war of digging, the daily life in the trenches gives digging enough to every soldier. Men dig daily even if they do not fight. At Anzac in July the Australians had a double share of digging, their daily share in the front lines, and, when that was finished, their nightly share, preparing cover for the new troops. During the nights of the latter half of July the Australians at Anzac dug, roofed and covered not less than twenty miles of dugouts. All of this work was done in their sleep time, after the normal day's work of fighting, digging and carrying up stores. Besides digging these hiding places they carried up, fixed, hid, and filled the water tanks which were to supply the newcomers.
A boatload of British troops leaving the S.S. Nile for one of the landing beaches
On the night of the 3rd of August when the landing of the new men began, the work was doubled. Everybody who could be spared from the front trenches went to the piers to help to land, carry inland and hide the guns, stores, carts and animals coming ashore. The nights, though lengthening, were still summer nights. There were seven hours of semi-darkness in which to cover up all traces of what came ashore. The newcomers landed at the rate of about 1,500 an hour, during the nights of the 3rd, 4th and 5th of August. During those nights, the Australians landed, carried inland and hid not less than one thousand tons of shells, cartridges and food, some hundreds of horses and mules, many guns, and two or three hundred water-carts and ammunition carts. All night-long, for those three nights, the Australians worked like schoolboys. Often, towards dawn, it was a race against time, but always at dawn, the night's tally of new troops were in their billets, the new stores were under ground and the new horses hidden. When the morning aeroplanes came over, their observers saw nothing unusual in any part of Anzac. The half-naked men were going up and down the gullies, the wholly naked men were bathing in the sea, everything else was as it had always been, nor were any transports on the coast. For those three nights nearly all the Australians at Anzac gave up most of their sleep. They had begun the work by digging the cover, they took a personal pride and pleasure in playing the game of cache-cache to the end.
It is difficult to praise a feat of the kind and still more difficult to make people understand what the work meant. Those smiling and glorious young giants thought little of it. They loved their chiefs and they liked the fun, and when praised for it looked away with a grin. The labour of the task can only be felt by those who have done hard manual work in hot climates. Digging is one of the hardest kinds of work, even when done in a garden with a fork. When done in a trench with a pick and shovel it is as hard work as threshing with a flail. Carrying heavy weights over uneven ground is harder work still; and to do either of these things on a salt-meat diet with a scanty allowance of water, is very, very hard; but to do them at night after a hard day's work, instead of sleeping, is hardest of all; even farm-labourers would collapse and sailors mutiny when asked to do this last. It may be said that no one could have done this labour, but splendid young men splendidly encouraged to do their best. Many of these same young men who had toiled thus almost without sleep for three days and nights, fell in with the others and fought all through the battle.
But all this preparation was a setting of precedents and the doing of something new to war. Never before have 25,000 men been kept buried under an enemy's eye until the hour for the attack. Never before have two Divisions of all arms been brought up punctually, by ship, over many miles of sea, from different ports, to land under fire, at an appointed time, to fulfil a great tactical scheme.
But all these difficulties were as nothing to the difficulty of making sure that the men fighting in the blinding heat of a Gallipoli August should have enough water to drink. Eighty tons of water a day does not seem very much. It had only to be brought five hundred miles, which does not seem very far, to those who in happy peace can telephone for 80 tons of anything to be sent five hundred miles to anywhere. But in war, weight, distance and time become terrible and tragic things, involving the lives of armies. The water supply of that far battlefield, indifferent as it was, at the best, was a triumph of resolve and skill unequalled yet in war. It is said that Wellington boasted that, while Napoleon could handle men, he, Wellington, could feed them. Our naval officers can truly say that, while Sir Ian Hamilton can handle men, they can give them drink.
As to the enemy before the battle, it was estimated that (apart from the great strategical reserves within 30 or 40 miles) there were 30,000 Turks in the vital part of the battlefield, to the north of Kilid Bahr. Twelve thousand of these were in the trenches opposite Anzac; most of the rest in the villages two or three miles to the south and southeast of Sari Bair. Three battalions were in the Anafarta villages, one battalion was entrenched on Ismail Oglu Tepe; small outposts held the two Baba hillocks on the bay, and the land north of the bay was patrolled by mounted gendarmerie. These scattered troops on the Turk right had guns with them; it was not known how many. The beach of Suvla was known to be mined.
August began with calm weather. The scattered regiments of the Divisions for Suvla, after some weeks of hard exercise ashore, were sent on board their transports. At a little before four o'clock on the afternoon of the 6th August, the 29th Division began the battle by an assault on the Turk positions below Krithia.