The British gunners wrought fearful damage in the traffic-crowded roads to the rear of the German line. The advance of the British in the moonlight, protected by flocks of night bombing airplanes, offered a strange and moving dramatic spectacle. At Pomereuil they were held up for a time by a heavy concentration of machine guns. Waiting until the advance had made progress north and south of them, they swept around on both sides of the gun nests. They found the German machine gunners occupying positions around a triangular space that had been cleared. The British, ignoring the invitation to enter the clearing, passed the gunners and captured Pomereuil Wood behind the triangle, and thus surrounded the enemy. Then they stormed and carried the position. Continuing their attacks upon the German lines south of Valenciennes, the British on October 25, 1918, advancing on a front of between six and seven miles, reached the Le Quesnoy-Valenciennes railway, capturing several villages on the way. Simultaneously with this operation the French armies, striking on the Serre and Aisne Rivers over a front of about forty miles, advanced their lines at all points, capturing villages and positions and taking over 3,000 prisoners. East of Courtrai, in the direction of the Scheldt, the British and French troops made further progress, wresting a number of villages and positions from the enemy. The climax of the French attack was General Guillemat's drive east of Laon against the Hunding position, the elaborately prepared line protecting the German center. Here was a quadruple trench system backed by concrete shelters, five lines of barbed wire each twenty feet deep, and the ground between planted with antitank mines, yet the indomitable French soldiers broke through it on a ten-mile front between St. Quentin-le-Petit and Herpy, and held their ground against deluges of gas and high-explosive shells. On the center of the great offensive General Mangin's army took Mortiers, on the south bank of the Serre, and gained a bridgehead north of the river. Farther north the British continued to press forward toward Valenciennes, and on their right General Plumer's troops under command of King Albert continued to cooperate in the drive against the German line on the Scheldt. On the whole forty-mile front of the offensive which the French began on October 25, 1918, great gains of territory were made. The Germans lost Crecy-sur-Serre in the center, and were forced to abandon a good part of the Hunding position. In two days Generals Debeney and Guillemat captured more than 6,000 prisoners, twenty cannon, and hundreds of machine guns. On October 27, 1918, General Debeney had pushed on to the outskirts of Guise. The Germans on this date launched three fierce attacks against three different points on the British front southeast of Valenciennes, all of which ended for them in disaster and heavy losses.