Finally, on Saturday night, May 15, 1915, all conditions for the attack seemed favorable to the British. There was no moon and the sky was dark, though there was not that inky blackness that occasionally occurs under similar weather conditions. The Indian Corps stole from their trenches and began to go forward from Richebourg l'Avoue. But the Germans were alert, and they illumined the movement with innumerable flares which made the Indians easy targets for the machine guns and rifles of the Teutons in that part of the line. So quick was the work to repel the attack that many of the Indians were slain as they were climbing out of their own trenches. As a surprise attack at night, the British were not making much of a success of their plan, but as a method of gaining ground and keeping their enemy busy on that particular part of the line the men of their Second Division were effective. They dashed into the first line of German trenches and cleared them out with the bayonet and hand grenade. The furor of the attack took them on into the second line. By dawn the soldiers of the Second Division had driven a wedge into the German line. This wedge was widened and driven in harder by Sir Douglas Haig's old command--the First Corps. This corps had suffered heavy losses at the first battle of Ypres; but the men who filled the gaps in the line were hardy young men who made excellent soldiers from the start. Added to their enthusiasm was a desire to show their ability as fighters, with the result that the British right wing was so effective that it, in a great measure, made up for the failure of the Indian troops. The center and the right, with bomb and bayonet, drove the Germans from the trenches; and then together they forced their way into the Teutons' position 600 yards along a front 800 yards in length. Early the next morning, before daylight on May 16, 1915, the British Seventh Division forced its way into the German salient at Festubert. In the meantime the Germans were making hasty preparations for a counterattack. Sir John French's plan, however, had proved effective. It would have required a large supply of high-explosive shells to have made much of an impression on the excellent defenses which the German soldiers had constructed on this part of the front. The British had no such supply of ammunition, and, even if they had had it, it is doubtful if they would have been able to demolish the formidable wire entanglements. Yet in this night attack with the bayonet the British troops had accomplished all they could have done if supplied with proper ammunition. In the desperate charge which they made no wire entanglement could stop the British soldiers. They threw their overcoats or blankets over the barbed wire and then climbed across the obstruction. The Seventh Division took three lines of trenches in this manner, until it was 12,000 yards back of the original line of its enemy.