In the event the attack was postponed because of rain (which made it hard for artillery to register targets). Haking opened his advanced corps HQ at Sailly at 6am on 17 July – a sign that he did not expect the attack to be postponed for long, let alone cancelled. At 8.30am he sent a despatch in which, contradicting the assurances he had given, he admitted that many of the Australian gunners had never fired on the Western Front before, and that many of the infantry were "not fully trained" and "do not appear to be very anxious for the attack to be delivered". Eventually the start times (11am for artillery, 6pm for the infantry attack) were fixed for 19 July.