On April 16 the "big push" of the Allies in France flared into a continuous battle covering nearly every mile of the long line from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Between Soissons and Rheims the French engaged in a terrific struggle, driving forward in a solid mass against the German lines on a front of twenty-five miles. Their way paved by ten days of "drum fire," the troops of Gen. Nivelle swept forward, carrying all of the first line of German positions between Soissons and Craonne. They also took the second line positions, south of Juvincourt, east of Craonne, reached the outskirts of Bermericourt, and advanced up the Aisne canal at Loivre and Courcy.
During these operations the French captured 10,000 Germans and a vast amount of war material.
The British were continuing their pressure on both Lens and St. Quentin, but were temporarily held up by a great storm on the 16th. The night before they captured the village of Villaret, which straightened Field Marshal Haig's line northwest of St. Quentin, and made further progress to the northwest of Lens. The prison cages to the rear of Arras were filled with German prisoners, nearly all of whom were captured in a dazed condition from the terrific British fire that won the great battle of Arras.
A TITANIC STRUGGLE FORESEEN.
"The struggle in the western theater of war promises to be a titanic one," said an eye-witness at British headquarters, April 16. "The Allies are prepared as never before, both in material and personnel, and are co-operating with a smoothness which comes from a complete understanding and thorough appreciation of the work in hand.
"The Germans have more divisions on the western front than would have been thought possible a year ago, but already a half score of Germany's best divisions have been smashed to pieces by the British onslaught and their own unsuccessful counter-attacks. The Bavarian divisions were sacrificed first, but the Prussian Guard divisions, thrown in to stem the British flood tide, have suffered such casualties in the last few days that they will have to be relieved."
The Canadians accounted for a large contingent of Prussian grenadiers in the fighting about "The Pimple" on Vimy ridge while an engagement at Lagnicourt April 15 took its heaviest toll both in dead and prisoners from five German guard regiments.
GERMAN ROUT AT LAGNICOURT.
The rout of the Germans at Lagnicourt, after what they believed to have been a successful attack, will ever be one of the striking pictures of the war. Repulsed and running for their own trenches, they were trapped by the barbed wire entanglements which had been built with such great strength and thickness in front of them. The boast of the Hindenburg line had been its belts of protective wire.
Caught within the meshes of this wire, the German guardsmen screamed madly for help and guidance. Some, like trapped rabbits, scurried up and down the outer barrier, searching in vain for openings. The British troops meantime had the greatest opportunity for open field rifle shooting since the battle of the Marne. Lying flat upon the ground, they poured bullets into the panic-stricken, gray-coated Germans until each man had fired a full 100 rounds.