Wheeler and the brigade arrived in Italy on 20 November, and proceeded through the Italian Riviera to reach Caporetto, where it had been sent to bolster the Italian troops against a German and Austro-Hungarian advance. As the Russian Republic removed itself from the war, the German Army refocused its efforts on the Western Front, and so in March 1918 Wheeler's brigade was ordered to leave Italy, getting a train from Castelfranco to Vieux Rouen in France. Back on the Western Front, the brigade was assigned to the 2nd Division, again part of Julian Byng's Third Army, reaching a stable area of the front in April. Here, Wheeler was engaged in artillery fire for several months, before the British went on the offensive in August. On 24 August, in between the ruined villages of Achiet and Sapignies, he led an expedition which captured two German field guns while under heavy fire from a castle mound; he was later awarded the Military Cross for this action: