Moreover, the earth had become so disintegrated by the shocks of the continuous bursting of shells that trenches could not be cut in it. No sooner had they been dug than the sides fell in and filled them again. The front and support line troops thus lived in shell-hole posts. In a few cases these were connected to one another by what had once been trenches. The condition in which the men lived in these posts defeats imagination, and needs to have been seen to be appreciated. They could not move by day. Their only seat was the oozing fire-step; if they stood up they gradually sank into the mud; even ration-boxes and duck-boards used as platforms soon became submerged. The conditions of sanitation were ghastly, the possibilities of cooking were non-existent, and from dawn till dusk the troops were cut off from communication even with the next post. Trench feet became an epidemic, frost-bite occurred frequently. In some cases old wounds reopened, as they did in the days of scurvy. In December dysentery appeared. The wastage amongst the troops became serious, and a general air of depression settled down over the Division. In fact, General Harper once confessed that he had never seen a man smile east of Pozières. One of the great problems of the Courcelette sector was the difficulty of finding one's way to the forward area. All movement being restricted to the hours of darkness, and the whole country-side being a featureless abomination, working parties, runners, reliefs, and ration parties were continually losing their way, and wandering through the mud until they had become exhausted. To make matters worse, when the Division took over the sector there were no wire entanglements created, so that there was always a reasonable chance of men who were lost wandering into the German lines, as it was difficult to discover when one was in No Man's Land. This, indeed, happened several times, while similarly lost Germans were more than once found wandering in our lines. In fact, prisoners were taken in this manner on six different occasions. The Division, therefore, had many problems to face on its arrival in this area. At first an attempt was made to link up the front line posts, wire them in, and dig communication trenches leading up to them. The whole area was further littered with the unburied dead and with salvage of every kind. The troops in the reserve line had in a few cases dug-outs, which had been discovered in Regina Trench--a famous trench captured by the Canadians a few days previously. The reserve battalions were little better off than those in the line. They were for the most part quartered in disused gun-pits and Bairnsfather villas, proof neither against shell-fire nor the weather.