In the following night, during a heavy rainstorm, the British attacked a number of the southwesterly suburbs of Lens, including the one known as Avion. They won all their first objectives, and captured over 200 prisoners. The fighting was in and out of ruined buildings, collieries, pit derricks, and the usual structures of a mining settlement. It was continued on the following day, advance being made on a total front of about four miles to a depth of over a mile. The result of these attacks was to give the British a series of strongly organized defensive systems on both banks of the river Souchez covering Lens.
On the same night the suburbs of the mining center were attacked, the British captured German forward positions south and west of Oppy in the Arras sector on a front of about 2,000 yards.
On the 28th and 29th of June, 1917, the Germans launched by night powerful attacks in the Verdun sector near Hill 304 and Avocourt Wood. They succeeded in piercing French first lines over the whole front attacked, but were subsequently driven out, except at one point, on the slope of Dead Man Hill, where they clung tenaciously, defying every attempt made by the French to regain the position.
THE GERMANS DEFEAT BRITISH ON BELGIAN COAST--INTENSE FIGHTING IN THE CHAMPAGNE AND AT VERDUN
In the first days of July, 1917, the Verdun sector became the scene of some of the heaviest fighting on the western front. The Germans seemed determined to redeem their failures in this area in the previous year and engaged in daily assaults with large numbers of picked forces. The German High Command had circulated so many stories regarding the declining strength of the French troops and of their weakened morale that they must have come to believe their own inventions. The soldiers of the Republic certainly did their best to convince the German command that they were very much alive and in good fighting trim. Most of the German attacks in the Verdun sector were repulsed, but they succeeded in retaining some conquered ground on the west slope of Dead Man Hill. On the Aisne front during the night of June 30, 1917, the Germans attacked near Cerny and Corbeny, when their storming detachments were almost annihilated by the devastating fire of the French artillery. To the northeast of Cerny the Germans succeeded in gaining a small salient which had first been leveled by their guns.