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On 23 April Gavrelle and Guémappe were captured after desperate fighting; and on the 28th an advance was made at Arleux and Oppy. On 3 May the Canadians took Fresnoy, and the Australians trenches at Bullecourt, but the Germans kept up a series of stubborn counter-attacks, especially at Fresnoy, Roeulx, and Bullecourt, and Fresnoy was lost on the 8th.
Counterattacks on the French front along the Chemin-des-Dames and in the region of Chevreux resulted in heavy losses to the Germans in men and guns. Toward the close of the day, May 11, 1917, the British after the hardest and most sanguinary fighting won two positions at Roeux just north of the Scarpe, and at Cavalry Farm beyond Guémappe.
A battalion held the trenches across the Cojeul Valley, supported by three battalions in the Brown Line and in Wancourt itself. The enemy was in Guemappe and also in some trenches just over the ridge of Wancourt Tower Hill. It was the business of the Brigade to hold the trenches and to make such improvement in them as opportunity might offer.
At Roeux the Bavarian garrison in the tunnels fought ferociously, and being unwilling to yield were destroyed. Around Guémappe, by the Cavalry Farm, which the Scottish troops had been forced to abandon in the previous month, the fighting was less intense. The Scots went about their task in a businesslike way and routed the garrison and took ten guns and a number of prisoners.
After the first great attack which gave us the Vimy Ridge and brought our line close to Lens in the north, and to the neighbourhood of Bullecourt in the south, the 23rd of April saw the second British advance, which gave us Gravrelle and Guemappe, and made further breaches in the Hindenburg line. Altogether the Allies in little more than a month took 50,000 prisoners, and large numbers of guns.
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