In the course of this British drive forty-two German divisions had suffered heavy losses; 40,000 soldiers and several hundred officers in prisoners alone.
On August 25, 1918, the troops of the Third French Army, fighting in water up to their waists in the marshes along the Avre, captured two of the strongest defenses of Roye. The first attack was made on the village of Fresnoy, two and a half miles to the north of Roye, where the Germans had restored their old fortifications of 1914-17, and had filled the neighborhood with machine-gun nests. After a brief artillery preparation the French stormed the concrete blockhouses and killed the gunners serving their pieces. Fresnoy was a notable stronghold and one of the centers of German resistance around Roye from which they had launched their counterattacks in attempts to check the advance. The Germans had orders to hold the place at any cost, but the French attacking from the north and south simultaneously bore down all resistance. Four hundred prisoners, including sixteen officers, were captured in the town. Another strong outpost of Roye, the village of St. Mard in the marshes of the Avre, was won by General Debeney's men in the afternoon after a violent struggle. The Germans had surrounded their concrete blockhouses with water let in from the Avre and through the floods in the face of intense machine-gun fire the French had to force their way to capture the position.
Roye was now invested from the north, west and south, and the German hold on the place was slowly weakened. North of Soissons, on the far right of the French line, the Germans renewed their efforts against the line from Pont-St. Mard to Juvigny. They were thrown back everywhere, the French making new gains and occupying Domaine Wood.
On the same day, while the French were making progress against heavy odds, British troops were in battle on a thirty-mile front, from the river Scarpe at a point east of Arras to Lihons south of the Somme, crossing the Hindenburg line on the northern sector of their attack. Canadians captured the villages of Wancourt and Monchy-le-Preux which formed part of the famous German defense, and they continued to make progress in an easterly direction. Scottish troops, driving forward on the north bank of the Scarpe, reached the outskirts of Roeux, north of Monchy-le-Preux.
General Debeney's First Army, after crushing the Germans in their battle positions around Roye, captured the town and continued pursuing the enemy who were retreating on a line from Hallu to the region south of Roye. The French advance was made on a twelve-mile front, and territory was gained to a depth of two and a half miles, the Germans being forced back on both sides of the Avre River.
By encircling tactics the French smashed the numerous machine-gun nests that were the backbone of the defense. One after another heavily fortified positions were turned and the Germans were forced to surrender the first and then the second line of defenses of 1914, to which they had retreated after being driven out of Montdidier.
The second German line was broken in the morning of August 26, 1918, when the French infantry, after repulsing a counterattack at St. Mard, encircled Roye and drove the enemy back some miles east of the town.
The British continued their attacks eastward along the southern bank of the Scarpe, occupying a considerable portion of the Hindenburg line and Chérisy, Vis-en-Artois, and the Bois du Sart, an advance of nearly four miles. In the night Canadians and Scottish troops carried Roeux and Fontaine-les-Croisilles, and the slopes around. North of the Scarpe, Gavrelle was occupied, and farther south between Croisilles and Bapaume New Zealanders and English, crushing heavy attacks by German reenforcements, continued to make good progress.
Bapaume was now farther threatened by this extension of the British attack to the north. The Germans had been forced back to the north of the city and their counterattacks on the south had utterly broken down. The capture of Montauban by the British marked an advance of two miles in twenty-four hours. Bazentin-le-Grand, southwest of Bapaume, was also occupied by Marshal Haig's men. This place lies a little to the west of the highroad from Bapaume to the Somme and its capture made the German hold in the region increasingly difficult. Bapaume was now being gradually surrounded by the Allies, and its fall was only a question of time.
During August 27-28, 1918, the French continued to drive the Germans before them on the whole front from Chaulnes to the Oise. In less than twenty-four hours General Humbert's troops made an advance of eight miles through a difficult country of woods, hills, and ravines west of Noyon. Mont Renaud, a famous stronghold commanding the Oise Valley, was carried by storm. Pushing on to the gates of Noyon the French surrounded the last bastion, Poqueri-Court Hill.