Early on the morning of the 8^th August 1918 the long-awaited Allied offensive began and by the following day the German High Command conceded that it had suffered its greatest defeat since the beginning of the war. The end was far from over, however, but the superiority of the advancing British army in men and munitions ensured that victory would eventually be achieved.

By the 6^th September the 2nd Manchesters had reached the outskirts of Holnon Wood a mere 3 ½ miles from Saint Quentin not far from Manchester Hill the scene of their triumph in April 1917.

The task of moving forward was given to the men of the 1^st and 6^th British Divisions and their comrades of the French 34^th Division. The Germans did not give in easily, fighting with determination at various points which had been familiar to the British in the actions of previous years, places such as Savy, Manchester Hill, Fayet. Certain redoubts left by the British in March 1917 had been strengthened by the enemy and were the scenes of stubborn defence by the German troops manning them. At Fresnoy –le-Petit the attacking 1^st Glosters and 2^nd Welch found that the German’s had their battalion HQ in tunnels and dugouts beneath the cemetery.

By the 24^th September Manchester Hill had been taken by the advancing French troops. Farther north the German were stubbornly resisting all attack but by the 28^th September when a patrol of the 1^st East Kents entered Fayet it was clear that the liberation of Saint Quentin was at last in sight.

The following day the British began their attack on the Hindenburg Line over the St.Quentin canal at the Riqueval Bridge and near Bellenglise, breaching the German defences and in so doing enabled the French to enter Saint Quentin unopposed on the 1^st October.