On the night of the 5th/6th February 1917 Grandcourt was evacuated and the enemy fell back to the line Serre-Miraumont-Pys. Attacks with which these initial successes were followed up on the 17th and 18th February secured to the British complete command over the enemy's defences of the upper Ancre and Miraumont village, while they accentuated his salient west of Serre. The loss of this would lay open for us a further advance on Puisieux-au-Mont and render the defence of the Gommecourt Salient exceedingly hazardous. It was therefore to be expected that any further withdrawal on the part of the enemy from in front of Miraumont would entail a withdrawal on a large scale, and this actually occurred. By the 24th February British troops had occupied Serre and all the enemy's defences on a line from that village to Gueudecourt, a frontage of some nine miles. On the 27th February patrols entered Gommecourt park and village, the prize so desperately fought for and withheld from the 1/4th Battalion six months earlier, and the following morning the whole of Puisieux fell into our hands. On the right the enemy's resistance was more stubborn, but an assault on Irles on the 10th March, which proved entirely successful, brought us face to face with the first of the two lines of defence about Bapaume to which reference has already been made. But even here the enemy made no determined stand, and by the 13th our pursuing columns were making preparations to assault the rear line. [Illustration: THE GERMAN RETIREMENT, FEBRUARY-MARCH, 1917] * * * * * The situation, therefore, when the 2/4th Battalion returned to the line after its rest, the last two days of which were spent at Gaudiempré, was that Corps and Divisional staffs were eagerly seeking information as to any indication of the enemy's expected retirement between Arras and Monchy-au-Bois, this being the only sector between Arras and the Somme now left in his possession, which he had held at the end of the Somme operations. This entailed a heavily increased burden of night patrolling duties on all troops in the line. On the 24th February the 2/4th Battalion moved into Bellacourt, relieving the 1/5th K.O.Y.L.I. in Brigade reserve, taking over the front line from the 1/4th K.O.Y.L.I. on the following day. The sector lay between Ransart and Blairville to the left of that previously occupied, and was held with three companies in front trenches and one in support. Battalion Headquarters were in Grosville. The German lines opposite this sector possessed two features of particular interest in the Blockhouse, a strongly defended salient, and the Talus, a machine-gun post pushed some 200 yards forward of their main line in a hillside embankment. Two sunken roads and a watercourse in No Man's Land added to the interest of life and provided our patrols with some useful work.