Battle of the Sambre (1918)

The Battle of the Sambre was fought on 4 November 1918 as Allied armies attacked German positions along the Sambre and associated canals. The operation formed part of the final advance during the Hundred Days Offensive.

British units forced crossings under machine-gun and artillery fire. Wilfred Owen was killed while leading men of the Manchester Regiment across the Sambre–Oise Canal near Ors, exactly one week before the Armistice.

This context supports fiction about the final days of the Western Front, the deaths of soldiers when peace was already approaching and the last combat experience of Wilfred Owen.