The Battalion sector was a very long one--about 2,800 yards--and the front line was very thinly held. It was divided into three company fronts, but each company had only one platoon in the front line, scattered in small posts. At night a second platoon was sent up to patrol between the posts on the company front. The other two platoons were in the support line for garrison and counter-attack. The fourth company also lived in the support line but was held in Battalion Reserve. The defences of this sector were very similar to those which the Battalion had just left, but were in better condition. The New Zealand Division had held the front recently and had done a great deal of work there; the support line was well supplied in parts with concrete dugouts, and two very large dugouts, each of which would easily hold a company, had been constructed by the Maori Pioneer Battalion. There were many communication trenches between the front and support lines, and there was an exceptionally comfortable Battalion H.Q. in a farmhouse which had been knocked about very little. There was a bath-house on the premises, and also a bakery--the pride of the 2/5th Battalion Loyal North Lancs.; but the latter was not used by the Battalion. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the sector was that it included about half of the old No. 3 Section, Fleurbaix--the very first sector the Battalion had held on coming to France. Its present left extended almost as far as the Convent Wall, and the left communication trench was that very Dead Dog Alley which had been dug by it two years before. There, too, were the graves of the men who had been the first to lay down their lives; these were sought out and put in good repair, for it was always the practice of the Battalion to pay this tribute to its lost ones whenever it had the opportunity. Officers were able to revisit some of their old haunts, particularly Capt. W. C. Fenton who stood again on the Rue des Bassiéres, happily without stopping another machine gun bullet. But how changed were the conditions in other ways! In 1915 the Battalion held a 1,000 yard front with something like 700 men in the front line; in 1917 it was holding a front nearly three times that length with only about 100 men permanently posted in the front line. In 1915 troops depended almost entirely on their rifles to maintain their position; in 1917 they had Lewis and machine guns, artillery and trench mortars, and they preferred to defend their positions by counter-attack rather than by original fire effect.