On the night of the 20th an attack was made on the orchard itself. During the afternoon the little enclosure was heavily bombarded, and at 7.45, when the artillery fire ceased, the Canadians climbed over their parapets and dashed forward. The advance was made in broad daylight, and a torrent of fire beat down upon them. At the edge of the orchard they discovered a deep ditch full of water, with a wired hedge on the other side. Without pause, the men plunged into the water, and, scrambling up the bank, pushed through gaps in the hedges and swarmed into the orchard. On the far side there were many Germans, but they fled as the Canadians charged. Before long the orchard was in British hands.
Early on the 20th the 10th Canadian battalion made a gallant but unavailing attempt to seize a very strong German position known as Bexhill. The approach to it was defended by a redoubt strongly held with machine guns. On the evening of the next day the Canadians returned to the attack, but it was not until the early morning of the 24th that the redoubt was captured. Five hundred men of the 5th Brigade, along with 100 men of the 7th (British Columbia) Battalion, made an advance in the bright moonlight across a ditch which had been previously bridged, and by four in the morning were in possession of the stronghold. Two hours later Bexhill itself was won, and the victors received orders to "dig in and hang on." They did so, in spite of three very fierce counter-attacks.
It was now clear that we could make no further headway without more guns and more shells than we then possessed. We were meeting with the same difficulty that had beset the French in Artois. The German lines broke up into a series of little fortresses, each of which could only be captured by a separate assault. It was the Battle of Festubert which brought home to the British people the absolute necessity for providing the army with more and more big guns and an almost unending stream of munitions. Our losses were very heavy, and they would have been greatly reduced had our artillery been more numerous and better supplied. Less than three weeks after the close of the battle the Government appointed a Minister of Munitions.