The Canadians in their continued struggle around Lens had displayed such irresistible courage and resolution that their deeds will long be remembered in the pages of history. No soldiers during the war faced more difficulties or confronted more formidable defenses. They forced their way through streets entangled with hedges of steel and houses bristling with machine guns. They penetrated tunnels too strong to be touched by shell fire. They threw themselves against fortress positions amid a fiery hail of shells and explosives. They swept through the towns of St. Laurent, St. Théodore, and St. Emilie to the north and west of Lens where sunken roads and slag heaps were strongly fortified, and so on through the apparently endless and formidable defenses to the western streets of the inner city.
The Germans never let a day pass without at least one attack on the Canadian positions, and once within twenty-four hours they launched no less than seven strong assaults. Between the attacks the men of Canada were subjected to a heavy gunfire from a wide semicircle of strong batteries.
Between August 10 and August 20, 1917, they were attacked in turn by six German divisions, each being shattered by the Canadians' dogged courage and amazing fighting power. These were the Seventh, Eighth, the Eleventh Reserve, the 220th and the First Guards Reserve Division. Besides those five divisions it was known that portions at least of the 185th Division and of the Sixth Reserve Division had also been engaged.
It was conservatively estimated by military observers of the struggle here that the German strength used at Lens was upwards of 50,000 men, and their losses were estimated at between 12,000 and 15,000 men.
At an early hour in the morning of August 20, 1917, the Canadians made a trench raid on the German front northwest of Avlon, where heavy fighting ensued. This front was strongly fortified by the Germans as protection for an important mining suburb southeast of Lens, and it was here that they had set up the guns withdrawn after the Canadian advance two days before. Here the hand-to-hand fighting was fierce and deadly, the Germans fighting with desperate courage, but the Canadians got the upper hand by slow degrees, and after inflicting heavy casualties took some prisoners and retired to their positions.
Early in the morning of the following day the forces from Canada again struck hard, attacking German trenches west and northwest of Lens. The battle raged throughout the day and far into the night. The Canadians advanced against strong opposition, using bomb and bayonet freely, winning important enemy positions to the northwest and southwest of the center of the city. It appears that the Germans had massed strong forces for a counterattack at daybreak against the newly won Canadian positions, and had already begun their forward push when they encountered the Canadians rushing across no-man's-land. Owing to a dense mist that prevailed at the time, the Germans did not see them until the foe fell upon them with bomb and bayonet.
This dramatic surprise for the Germans seemed to have had a chilling effect on their fighting spirit. They retreated in wild haste to the trenches they had left, despite the frenzied attempts of their officers to rally them. Close on their heels dashed the Canadians, and mounting the parapets showered bombs among the other troops that had gathered for the attack. As the Germans fled for the communication trenches the Canadians leaped among them, and with bomb and bayonet killed a great number.
In the Verdun region on this date the French continued to make important gains. All day long the tide of battle ebbed and flowed in waves of fire. On the left bank of the Meuse the French captured the famous Côte de l'Oie and the village of Régneville. On the right bank of the river, sweeping through Samogneux, they seized an entire system of trenches between that village and Hill 344 which had been won on the previous day. The Germans delivered a number of strong and determined attacks on both sides of the river, but lost heavily in their attempts to check the French advance. Some idea of the French gains on the left bank of the Meuse may be gathered from the fact that when the Germans held the village of Fleury and menaced Verdun they were two and a half miles from the fortress. On August 21, 1917, when the French held the village of Samogneux, the Germans were seven miles from the fortifications.
Throughout the day's fighting the German counterattacks failed completely. The French maintained all their gains and organized captured positions. Nearly 7,000 prisoners were taken during the advance, of whom 116 were officers.
The capture of Dead Man Hill by the French troops was an especially notable achievement, for its system of underground defenses made it as nearly impregnable as human ingenuity could devise. That it could be captured in a single day was owing to the ceaseless activity of the French gunners, who had ravaged the stronghold with explosives so thoroughly that it seemed impossible that anything human could survive, however hidden underground. There were a hundred deserters to the French lines, and the Germans surrendered in squads with their noncommissioned officers. The whole garrison of Dead Man Tunnel, which included two battalion commanders, were also made prisoners. When it is considered that the Germans had 400 batteries in action back of their front lines during the two days' advance it will be understood that the French fighting man was heartened up and could look with confidence to the future.