THE date of the great attack had been settled by August, but the preparations for it, in various ways, had already been going on for months. The attack was generally expected, of course, and anyone who thought for any length of time about conditions in Palestine could have worked out that it would be launched in the coastal plain, and in the autumn, preferably earlier than the end of October. The Third Gaza battle had begun on 31 October and the pursuit was soon bogged down by mud and rain; therefore an attack at least a month before the end of October would be suggested, while any part of the front away from the coast was geographically much more difficult to fight in.

The arrival of so many new units – new both in the sense that they were unfamiliar with conditions in Palestine, and, in some cases, that they had only just been constituted as battalions, or that they included raw recruits – meant that a fairly intensive programme of training had to be organized. This, in fact, did not merely apply to the new arrivals and new recruits, but for different reasons was applied to the existing units as well. These were brought out of the line regularly, given a break, then given further training. Officers were sent on courses which imparted the latest tactical ideas, and these were then translated into fairly realistic training for the rank-and-file, ranging from lectures and demonstrations right up to action on the front line.