Battle of the Drocourt-Quéant line (1918)

On 2 September 1918, near the end of the First World War, the Canadians finally cracked the vaunted Drocourt-Quéant Line in France, a branch of the Hindenburg defences. After prolonged, close-quarters fighting they achieved success, but at the cost of another 12,000 casualties. The Canadian Corps blade was becoming dulled from overuse. It was only thanks to innovations in tactics and technology that the costly failures of the Somme in 1916 had been transformed into the costly victories of Amiens and Drocourt-Quéant in 1918.