There was intermittent shelling of the British front south of the Ancre during the night of October 4, 1916. A successful raid was carried out by a London territorial battalion in the Vimy area on the following day, and an assault on the British trenches east of St. Eloi was repulsed. October 6, 1916, was unmarked by any important offensive on the part of the belligerents. The Germans continued to shell heavily the British front south of the Ancre. Three British raiding parties succeeded in penetrating German trenches in the Loos area and south of Arras.
An important success was won by the British on the following day, October 7, 1916, when Le Sars--their twenty-second village--was captured. The Germans evidently anticipated the attack, for they had massed a large number of troops on a short front. The town itself was held by the Fourth Ersatz Division, and the ground behind Eaucourt l'Abbaye by a Bavarian division. The place, though strongly fortified, did not offer the resistance that the British troops expected. Their first forward sweep carried them to a sunken road that ran across the village at about its middle, and a second rush after the barrage had lifted brought them through the rest of the place and about 500 yards beyond on the Bapaume road. In Le Sars itself six officers and between 300 and 400 other ranks were made prisoners by the British. The Bavarians between Le Sars and Eaucourt fought with stubborn valor and gave the British troops plenty of hard work. Owing to the complication of fortified positions, trenches, and sunken roads, the ground in this section of the fighting area presented many difficulties. To the northeast of Eaucourt the determined pressure of the British troops caused the Bavarian resistance to crumble and the victors swept on and out along the road to Le Barque. At other points the British pierced the German lines and occupied positions midway between Eaucourt and the Butte de Warlencourt. To the left, a mile or so back, in what was known as the Mouquin Farm region, the British troops pushed forward in the direction of Pys and Miraumont, and all that part of Regina Trench over which there had been much stiff fighting was held by them. German troops had recovered a small portion of the front-line trenches they had lost to the north of Les Boeufs. In this sector on the night of October 7, 1916, the British guns shattered two attempted counterattacks and gathered in three officers, 170 men, and three machine guns. To the north of the Somme the French infantry cooperating with the British army attacked from the front of Morval-Bouchavesnes and carried their line over 1,300 yards northeast of Morval. During this advance over 400 prisoners, including ten officers, were captured, and also fifteen machine guns. Large gatherings of German troops reported north of Saillisel were caught by the concentrated fire from the French batteries.