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Although we had the advantage of ground for most purposes, and could carry out infantry reliefs in daylight, there were few places satisfactory for concealing our field guns. They were mostly concentrated about Wancourt and Héninel, and these two places consequently received frequent and heavy punishment from the German heavies.

The Germans had not only repelled the attack on our right, but had attempted to push through into Héninel, in the Cojeul Valley. Fortunately, however, the 149th M.-G. Company, commanded by Major Morris, stopped this movement by a well-directed fire to our right flank. When, however, the attack was renewed in the afternoon things went better for us.

The capture of Wancourt and Heninel broke off another fragment of the Siegfried line, while to the north our advance spread up to the gates of Lens; the villages of Bailleul, Willerval, Vimy, Givenchy-en-Gohelle, Angres, and Lievin, with the Double Crassier and several of the suburbs of Lens, fell into our hands.

The Londoners of the 56th Division made a record advance through Neuville-Vitasse to Henin and Heninel, and broke a switch-line of the Hindenburg system across the little Cojeul River by Wancourt.

I had played chess with one man whom afterward I met as a gunner officer at Heninel, near Arras, on an afternoon when a shell had killed three of his men bathing in a tank, and other shells made a mess of blood and flesh in his wagon-lines. We both wore steel hats, and he was the first to recognize a face from the world of peace.

The German gunners were doing their evening hate. Crumps were bursting heavily again amid our gun positions. Heninel was not a choice spot. There were other places of extreme unhealthfulness where our men had fought their way up to the Hindenburg line, or, as the Germans called it, the Siegfried line.

As far as I could make out our lighter siege guns had moved up towards the Telegraph Hill ridge and our field guns towards Neuville Vitasse; there were still howitzers of heavy calibre in the environs of the city itself. I believe the 151st Infantry Brigade attacked on April 13, and pushed across the Cojeul Valley north of Héninel, and dug in just west of the Wancourt Tower ridge.