– Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow, appointed officer commanding the 1st Battalion, Newfoundland Regiment, December 6, 1915, while the Regiment was serving in Gallipoli. Personal diary, mid-January, 1914.66 Z-DAY, THE START of the Big Push, was originally scheduled for June 29, but postponed due to weather. It was envisioned as a systematic progression of firepower from guns and howitzers and mortars against the German trenches and observation and machine-gun posts building into a continuous and lethal cascade.67 The German retreat would be rapid, the British victory decisive. This would bring an end to the war. This contemporary account describes the lead up to the battle: The scene of the battlefields at night was of terrible beauty…The fields at the edge of the battle of guns were very peaceful…A staff officer had whispered a secret to us at midnight in a little room, when the door was shut and the window closed. Even then they were words which could only be whispered, and to men of trust… The attack will be made this morning at 7:30.
