It has been stated that the trenches and wire were in a very had condition: there was unlimited work in sight, and there began for the Division a period of unremitting toil, such as later reinforcements never dreamed of, except those who helped in the preparations for the Battle of Messines. When the Division left this sector at the beginning of August, 1916, it was able to hand over to the relieving Division trenches in perfect repair, amply protected by belts of wire of its own erecting. Nor must it be supposed that the brigade in reserve had a much easier time than those in the line; for large working parties were provided every day and night, many as far forward as the front line. Preparations for gas attacks on the enemy involved the carrying of many hundreds of heavy cylinders to the front line, and this work fell to the share of the reserve troops.

So much for its defensive work. The more important side of a soldier's life—his offensive against the enemy—received even more thought, which bore fruit in ceaseless activity. The Division found the sector a quiet one when it arrived, but it was not in the character of the General Officer Commanding the Division to continue a "live and let live" policy. The name of No-Man's-Land must be made true, so far at any rate as the enemy was concerned; and to ensure this, a system of vigorous patrolling was instituted at once. Every means possible was used to annoy the enemy—shell-fire, trench mortar bombs, rifle grenades, sniping, and machine-gun, Lewis gun, and rifle fire—and he naturally retaliated; with the result that the sector rapidly became anything but a peaceful one. The British attack at the Somme on July 1st, and the unsuccessful attack of the 5th Australian Division on July 19th, on the right of the New Zealand Division, naturally increased the enemy's activity on the latter's front.

The daily routine of trench warfare, familiar as it is to those who have experienced it, may be described here for the benefit of other readers. The routine varied in detail, according to the personal views of battalion commanders; but in essentials it was much the same throughout the Division.

The two periods of the day most favoured for making attacks, and accordingly the two periods when the garrison of a trench needs to be best prepared to meet the enemy without delay, are from just before dawn till broad daylight, and from dusk till after dark. It is therefore laid down in all modern armies that, when in the face of the enemy, all troops must stand to their arms at these two periods at least during the day. In the British Army, these periods (called "stand-to") are fixed at an hour each, but are subject to extension at the discretion of the responsible officer on the spot, in the event of a fog or other circumstances making a longer "stand-to" advisable. The actual times when the morning and evening "stand-to" began and ended, varied, of course, according to the season of the year. On these periods, when every officer and man in the trench had to be in his fighting station, with all his equipment on and his bayonet fixed, the daily routine was built up.

The main considerations on which the routine depended were; first, the necessity of rendering it impossible that the enemy should at any time of day or night surprise the garrison; second, the necessity of ensuring that every man should get enough sleep to enable him to carry on his duties properly; third, the proper feeding of the garrison; fourth, the amount of work required to be done to keep the trenches in fightable order.

In describing the routine of a day of trench-warfare, it is better to begin with the evening, as in this form of warfare the night is the most important period of the twenty-four hours. During this period precautions against surprise obviously need to be much more elaborate than during daylight. They consist firstly of the evening "stand-to," when everyone of the garrison is in his battle position. In the middle of 1916, the front-line garrisons were much larger than they were later on, and the trenches were unduly crowded. It was often necessary to put the whole of a section into one bay of the trench; and it was the duty of the section commander, being responsible for the protection of the men under him, to see that sentries were posted, and personally to change the sentries at the end of their watches. Later on, when experience had shown that trenches were best defended by a deep series of comparatively weak lines, rather than by two or three stronger ones, a section usually occupied two bays: but the same precautions against surprise were taken in each occupied bay.

It was laid down that there must always be two sentries on duty at night, but only one of these need be looking out over the parapet; the other, however, had to be so near the man on the look-out, that the latter could attract his attention by touching him, and without speaking to him. The sentries were relieved, as a rule, every two hours; but in very cold weather reliefs took place every hour. The remaining men of the garrison of the bay were allowed to sleep if they could, but, of course, were forbidden to remove either boots or equipment. So the night passed, till the whole garrison turned out at morning "stand-to." At the end of "stand-to," if there was a ration of rum on issue it was distributed to the men; and breakfast was, as a rule, ready immediately after "stand-down."

Further precautions against surprise by night were effected by means of listening posts and patrols. A listening post usually was garrisoned by six men under a non-commissioned officer; their post was in No-Man's-Land, and was any distance from ten yards upwards in front of our trenches, according to the width of No-Man's-Land and the activity of the enemy. The post was generally a shell-hole, and was sometimes protected by a little wire; but as concealment was essential, it could not be made an elaborate work. Two men only occupied it at a time, one of whom was on the look-out, while the other sat down. The rest of the garrison of the post were accommodated in a bay of the front line trench, and usually kept in touch with their sentries in No-Man's-Land by means of a piece of cord, over which signals were passed by the sentry making an agreed number of pulls. The non-commissioned officer in charge visited the post and changed the sentries—hourly as a rule. This work was particularly trying in cold and wet weather, as practically no movement on the part of the sentry was possible.

Patrols were employed both in our own trenches and in No-Man's-Land. In our own trenches, besides the officers and non-commissioned officers on trench duty, who visited the posts to see that all the sentries were alert, patrols were also sent out at frequent intervals during the night, from the posts on the flank of each company in the front line to the flank posts of the two adjoining companies. Also, where the line was held on the "locality" system, and there was a "gap" between two companies, one of the two was definitely made responsible for the defence of the gap; and its duty was to supply a patrol to report to its neighbour's post on the other side of the gap. at frequent intervals.

No-Man's-Land patrols were also of two kinds, fighting patrols and patrols sent out merely to watch the enemy. At Armentières, in 1916, where our object was to drive the enemy out of No-Man's-Land, fighting patrols were common; their duty was to seek out and attack the enemy, and their strength of numbers was large accordingly. As a rule, however, a patrol was sent out with instructions to obtain some definite piece of information about the enemy's doings, and in order that it should be as inconspicuous as possible, its numbers rarely exceeded three men. Such a patrol had instructions that it was not to get itself involved in a fight, unless it was absolutely impossible to do anything else. Three patrols of this kind were usually sent out on each company's front every night, and the period between the evening "stand-down" and the morning "stand-to" was divided equally between them; so that at no period of the night was No-Man's-Land free of patrols. The officer on trench duty was responsible for seeing that the patrols went out at the proper times and by the proper routes, and for keeping the sentries in the trench informed of their probable movements.

The meal-times of the garrison were usually—breakfast immediately after morning "stand-down," lunch at twelve, and tea just before "stand-to." In the long cold winter nights (after the Division had returned from the Somme) soup or cocoa was issued at midnight.

It was difficult to prevent the hours of sleep and work clashing, except in the summer months, when the day was a very long one. If the work was within a few yards of the front line, it was possible to set the garrison of each bay a definite task to be done during the night. The men were only too glad of some occupation to pass the time; for sleep was not easy, and was broken at every relief. If the work had to be done in the day-time, and each man had to do six hours' good work every day (the standard task when the Division first went to Armentières), the conflicting claims of work and sleep were hard to adjust, and the day's routine varied from time to time.

Besides the daily task of work allotted to each battalion, there were other things which had to be done, but which did not count as "work" from the military point of view. For instance, rations had to be carried by the trench garrison from the point beyond which the horse transport was unable to come. The distance over which rations had to be man-handled usually depended upon the quietness of the sector; but in some sectors the saps leading from the nearest tracks available for limbers were very long ones, and the labour of bringing up rations was increased accordingly.

It was the rule that a man must shave every morning; and though a few men actually found this a hardship, and a rather larger number affected to do so, there can be no doubt that the rule was a good one. For two reasons: firstly, an unshaven man loses his self-respect, and with it no small portion of his morale; and secondly, when a man has shaved he almost invariably has the wash which, but for the act of shaving, might easily slip his memory. In the wet season, another detail of the day's routine was rubbing one's feet with whale-oil, and changing one's socks. These were highly important precautions against trench feet, and were the subject of frequent enquiry by the Commanding Officers of battalions when on their daily rounds of inspection—another feature of the day's routine.

Among the distinctive features of trench warfare was the minor operation known as a "raid," which was carried out by a party of selected officers and other ranks. A party of this kind, after special training, would make an attack on a short portion of the enemy trenches opposite its own; and after killing or capturing the garrison, return to its own trenches. The intelligence branch of General Headquarters did all it could to encourage troops in all parts of the line to initiate minor operations of this nature. It is obvious that, if we were in the habit of taking prisoners frequently in every part of the line, we could keep ourselves informed of the movement of enemy divisions from one part of the line to another, or of the arrival of troops from another front. To move large bodies of troops is a troublesome operation, and it is seldom done without a pretty strong reason; so it follows that our intelligence service could generally rely on deductions which they had made from the movement of the enemy's divisions.

The main object of a raid was, therefore, to get prisoners: raiding parties usually tried to capture documents as well; but documents might be sometimes misleading, while it was very seldom indeed that some detail of uniform, badges, pay-book, identity-disc or even marks on boots or clothing did not show with certainty the unit to which a prisoner belonged. Also, prisoners frequently were willing to talk: if they would not talk to our intelligence officers, they sometimes unthinkingly gave away valuable information to our "agents," disguised as other prisoners.

The first raid in which troops of the New Zealand Division were engaged took place on the night of June 16th/17th, when a party consisting of four officers and eighty-three other ranks, drawn from all four battalions of the 2nd Brigade, raided a new enemy work known as "the Breakwater." This work (as its name suggests) was a sap which curved out from the enemy's front trenches, west of "Les 4 Hallots" Farm, which lay just inside the enemy's lines. The party from the 2nd Canterbury Battalion consisted of 2nd Lieutenant H. G. de F. Garland and sixteen other ranks. As all subsequent raids differed from this one only in matters of detail (though, as a rule, a raiding party was not so large as on this occasion), it may be described rather more fully than its actual importance warrants.

The enemy's new work was about two hundred and fifty yards long; and this work, together with thirty-five yards of his original trench on each side of its junction with the Breakwater, formed the objective of the raid. The main object of the raid was to find out why the enemy was building this work—whether merely to cut off a re-entrant in his line, or to provide a position of assembly from which he might attack our line—but another important object was to identify the enemy unit opposed to the Division, preferably by the capture of prisoners. The raid also had the minor aims of causing loss to the enemy and lowering his morale. The party had carefully rehearsed the operation over a model of No-Man's-Land and the enemy's trenches.

The force was divided into several smaller parties, each of which had its own definite task allotted to it. Thus, some parties were to cut gaps in our own wire, other parties were to act as scouts, to protect the movement of the rest across No-Man's-Land; and there were larger parties whose task was to assault the new work, and after capturing it, to protect other parties engaged in searching for identifications. There was no intention to hold the enemy position after it had been captured, or even to remain there for more than a few minutes: there was, therefore, no need for the members of the party to be encumbered by heavy clothing, equipment, or ammunition. All that anyone carried was a rifle, with bayonet fixed, and with an electric torch firmly bound to the stock, so as to illuminate, if need be, any object at which the bayonet was pointed. A "knobkerry" (or club), hung from the wrist by a lanyard, was designed to serve as an emergency weapon, in the event of a man losing his rifle. Faces and hands were blackened, all marks of identification were removed from clothing, and no papers of any kind were carried.

The night of the 16th was a calm one, and the sky was clear. The wire-cutting parties left the trenches at 11 p.m., and had cut the necessary gaps in our own wire before 11.15 p.m., when our artillery began to bombard the objective and the enemy's wire in front of it. Under cover of the bombardment, which lasted twenty minutes, the remaining parties passed through our wire, and formed up in No-Man's-Land, as near to the enemy's trenches as our artillery fire would allow. At 11.35 p.m., the artillery lifted from the enemy's wire and the Breakwater, and came down on the main trench behind; while certain guns still continued to fire on the flanks of the objective, with the result that the latter was isolated in a semi-circle of fire—known in technical language as a "box-barrage."

The scouting parties then dashed forward to find whether the enemy's wire had been cut by the artillery fire; and on their reporting that the way was clear, the main parties assaulted the Breakwater in the centre, and began to work their way along the sap towards either end. The work was found to be unfinished, and evidently only lightly manned. There were only two of the enemy found there, and these were bayoneted by the left assaulting party; but identifications were obtained from their bodies. The sappers attached to this party demolished with gun-cotton a listening post, which was found at the forward end of the sap. The right assaulting party, working down the sap, found it effectually blocked at a point fifteen yards short of its junction with the main trench. As the time fixed for rallying had almost arrived, this party did not attempt to enter the main trench by going across country.

The raid was a successful one, and set a standard for the many raids which followed it. Its good results were due, in great measure, to the artillery, which not only thoroughly cut the enemy's wire and barraged the raiding party against infantry attacks, but also did such good counter-battery work that the enemy's retaliation was very weak. Indeed, nearly all the losses of the party—one officer and one other rank killed and three officers and five other ranks wounded—were caused by the attacking troops getting too close to our own barrage.