The apogee of the Australian infantry’s development on the Western Front came in 1918, after its amalgamation as a five division corps under Sir John Monash. In an Australian dress rehearsal for its part the coming Battle of Amiens in August, the Australians conducted a limited offensive at the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918. Thereafter, the Australian Corps maintained a level of battlefield effectiveness that was in keeping with the entire fielded British Expeditionary Force (BEF). By this point in the conflict, the longest serving Australian troops had been on the Western Front for about twenty months. British enabled, using British technology and tactics, the Australian infantryman individually and collectively had undergone the same learning process as the entire British Army. Australian troops were engulfed in the ‘industrialised-scale’ combat of the Somme campaign during 1916. These events precipitated the learning process. The year 1917 was a crucible in which newly introduced training, tactics and technology were refined and endorsed. Australians took part in the ill-conceived use of armour at Bullecourt during the Battle of Arras in 1917, and in the burgeoning use of bite-and-hold tactics at Messines in June 1917.