The most peculiar feature of this sector lay in the immunity from shell fire of Laventie behind the British lines and of Aubers in the German territory. Each village layabout 2000 yards in rear of the respective front trenches, and both were used as reserve billets for the troops holding the line. By mutual and tacit consent the artillery on each side refrained from bombarding the other's billets; any infringement of this unwritten law on one side being met with immediate and severe retaliation by the other. During the period therefore spent in the Laventie area, the Battalion on coming out of the line had the enjoyment of occupying tolerably wind-and water-tight billets without molestation, although they were distant little more than a mile from the enemy lines. A considerable number of civilians still clung to their battered homes in Laventie, and it was strange to see French soldiers, whose divisions were serving in Alsace or the Argonne, come to Laventie "on leave from the front"! The 1/4th Londons now settled down to a regular routine of four days in the right subsection breastworks followed by four days in billets in Laventie, tours being later extended to six days, and as this routine continued until the middle of December we need not follow it in detail. The sector had been particularly quiet prior to the 56th Division's arrival, but almost from the day of its taking over the line conditions began to change. Possibly a certain undesirable aggressiveness on the part of the Londoners began to annoy an enemy who, but for interference, was content to conduct a perfectly peaceful war; possibly the change was due to the recovery of both sides from the fatigue and over-strain of the Somme. Whatever the reason, certain it is that as the winter wore on the whole Neuve Chapelle-Fauquissart area began to become much more lively than it had been. On our side the most vigorous system of patrolling, of daily organised shoots by guns of all calibres, trench mortars and machine-guns, and of an intensive course of sniping, quickly gave us the ascendancy and caused the Germans a pardonable irritation under which they showed themselves less and less disposed to take their punishment quietly. In the line the Battalion was busily occupied with its share of the works programme and in patrolling in which the infrequency of encounters with the enemy in No Man's Land gradually led to the belief that his front breastwork was not occupied. This was probed further on the last evening of November when a fighting patrol of twenty men under 2/Lieut. W. H. Webster (Intelligence Officer) entered the enemy lines at the Wick Salient and found it untenanted, in a shocking condition of flood and affording ample evidence that no attempt was being made to repair the serious damage caused by our artillery fire.