Meanwhile the Germans had made some advance to the north of the Scarpe, and the 7/8 Scots Borderers on the left wing had to fall back to preserve the line. At 11 A.M. the enemy were raging in the centre of the line, and the 6th Camerons, north of the Cambrai Road, were forced backwards, the enemy piercing their front. Up to 1.45 the weight of the attack was mostly in the north, and ended by all three brigades moving back, with the enemy still striving with the utmost fury and ever fresh relays of men to burst the line. At 3 P.M. the German stormers had won the Bois des Bœufs, but were driven out again by the 9th Black Watch and by the 11th Argylls, who had lost their C.O., Colonel Mitchell. The division was worn to a shadow, and yet the moment that the German attack seemed to ease both they and the Fourth Division on their north advanced their front. In this single bloody day the Fifteenth Division lost 94 officers and 2223 men, but there can be no doubt that their action, with that of the Third Division and the Fourth on either side of them, was the main determining factor in the whole of this vast battle. General Reed (a V.C. of Colenso) with his Brigadiers, Hilliard, Allgood, and Lumsden, might well be proud of the way they held the pass. North of the Scarpe all three brigades of the Fourth Division were exposed to a furious attack, and lost the village of Rœux, which was defended literally to the death by the 2nd Seaforths of the 10th Brigade, but the 1st Hants in the front line of the 11th Brigade and the 2nd Essex of the 12th stood like iron, and in a long day's fighting the enemy was never able to make any serious lodgment in the position, though the rushes of his bombing parties {44} were said by experienced British officers to have been extraordinarily determined and clever. Very little ground was gained by the Germans, and of this a section upon the left flank near Gavrelle was regained by a sudden counter-attack of the Fourth Division. [Sidenote: Sixth and Seventeenth Corps. March 28.] Of the attack to the north of the Third Army in the Bailleul and Oppy district, it should be noted that it fell upon the Fifty-sixth London Territorial Division, who for once had the pleasant experience of being at the right end of the machine-gun. They took every advantage of their opportunity, and there are few places where the Germans have endured heavier losses with no gains to show in return. The Westminsters and L.R.B.'s of the 169th Brigade were particularly heavily engaged, and a party of the former distinguished themselves by a most desperate defence of an outlying post, named Towy Post, near Gavrelle, which they held long after it was passed by the enemy, but eventually fought their way to safety. The attack lasted from seven in the morning till six at night, and the Londoners had full vengeance for their comrades of July 1916 or August 1917, who had died before the German wire even as the Germans died that day.