On the evening of the 9th January 1917 the Battalion took over from the Kensingtons the right subsection of the Moated Grange sector. This sector had seen a good many changes both as regards defences and boundaries since the Battalion's previous occupation of it in the summer of 1915, and the lines now taken over extended from Sign Post Lane on the right for a frontage of some 1400 yards to a point opposite the village of Mauquissart which lay just within the German lines. [Illustration: LAVENTIE, WINTER 1916-1917] The sector was held with three companies in the front breastworks and supporting posts and one in reserve on Cardiff Road. Battalion Headquarters occupied shelters at Ebenezer Farm. These positions were far from ideal. The strength of the Battalion was much scattered and difficult of control in emergency, owing to the exceedingly bad communications within the area. The supporting platoons of the front line companies, at Bristol House, Cornwall Siding and Pump House, occupied the only remaining tenable portions of what had originally been the German second line prior to the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, and were separated from each other by about 100 yards of broken down and almost impassably wet breastworks. For communication from front to rear only one trench, Tilleloy South, was passable with any degree of safety in daylight. Between Pump House and the front line, a distance of about 250 yards, it was seriously overlooked from the German positions in the Bois du Biez, with the result that traffic up and down it was frequently sniped with trench mortar and 5·9 shells. Always an area of considerable activity, the Moated Grange possessed several unpleasant features as a result of the active mining operations which had begun in 1915, and were still proceeding with unabated energy. The Duck's Bill Farm had given place to an enormous crater of the same name, linked with the British lines by a defended sap which left the front line at Sunken Road. The defence of this crater and sap took a platoon, whose arduous duties of continual listening and constant preparedness for an enemy raid were carried out under exceedingly rough conditions, as both the crater and the sap were full of water and shelters were conspicuous by their absence.