The Occupation of Cambrai

At half-past one o'clock on the morning of October 9th, in utter darkness, the Canadians entered Cambrai. They took the garrison of the town by surprise, quickly obtained the upper hand in all the numerous instances of street encounters and house-to-house fighting, reached and occupied the Place d'Armes, and from there spread throughout the entire area. By daylight they were clear of the south-eastern edge of the city and well along the Avenue de Valenciennes; in the south-west they were established at the Paris Gate. Units of our Third Division pressed due east to the line of the Scheldt Canal, secured all bridgeheads as far as Eswars, and captured several villages and hundreds of prisoners. By 6 a.m. our engineers had spanned the canal with a pontoon bridge. In the town itself several hundred prisoners were taken...