Night time was generally the busiest time for troops manning forward trench positions because the cover of darkness gave protection from observation, which would generally bring rifle, sniper or machine gun and artillery fire on attempts to move about above the parapet during the day. Night time was therefore essential for carrying out necessary tasks out of the trenches like laying or reinforicing wire, shoring up strongpoints or relaying telephone wire. All sides used this time to also send out patrols into no mans land. In British parlance, a patrol would be loosely defined as either a fighting patrol or a reconaissance patrol, or a prisoner or raiding party. A reconaissance patrol would be tasked with trying to gather as much information about the disposition of the enemy as possible. These tasks would be locating and noting the position of enemy observation points, trench strongpoints and machine gun positions, areas the enemy were expanding or reinforcing their trenches, weakpoints and gaps in the enemies trench line and wire defences, or listening for the sounds of large aounts of men or material moving into the enemy trench lines which may indicate build up for an attack. These patrols were not necessarily passive, as they could also be used to cut enemy telephone cables and weaken wire defenses. Listening for and noting the position of enemy working parties was another role, as they could be reported back to call in machine gun or artillery fire on them to disrupt of kill the enemy party. Generally however they tried to avoid contact with enemy patrols. These patrols often planned to break contact quickly with the enemy upon discovery, often by woking in tandem with rifleman in the trench or support weapons like heavy or light machine guns or (more rarely) artillery, to provide covering fire and distraction if they had to bug out of no mans land.

A fighting patrol had the opposite mission: They were tasked with heading into no mans land with the task of agressively engaging and disrupting enemy fighting and reconaissance patrols, to hinder them at their assigned tasks and wrest the night tme initiative away from the enemy. They could also be tasked with breaking down enemy wire and eliminating outposts such as observation points or listening posts in no mans land, and carry out hit and run attacks against manned enemy positions like machine gun posts or sentry points, using grenades or volleys of rifle fire. These tasks had to be careful planned and escape routes pre organised, as a fighting patrol would quickly attract the ire of any enemy rifleman or machine guns along the frontline trench, and maybe a hasty sector barrage of shrapnel if the local artillery officer was concerned it was the prelude for a full scale raid. Although reconaissance patrols did rarely move into the area betwenn the enemies front and secondline trench, they would almost never actually move into the enemy trench. This was the the job of a raiding party.

Raiding parties had one of the most dangerous jobs possible, to actually sneak into an enemy trench and attack it, then get away. Raids varied in size and could be quite small, section sized if necessary, and these small raids often tried to capture enemy sentries or soldiers to be taken back for interrogation, therefore these raids made use of silent weapons for the purpose of stealth, such as knives, clubs, axes and sharpened shovels. Larger scale raids could be very large indeed, up to several dozen men or larger, and were tasked with rushing into an enemy trench after sneaking across no mans land to kill and terrify enemy personnel and destroy emplaced weapons like machine guns, or target and capture officers for interrogation. The British used the tactic of the box barrage to support these larger scale raids, in which the local sector artillery would essentally try to cordon off the trench being raided by putting down a box shaped barrage line over the area, to hinder enemy troops moving into the sector to fight off the attackers. The box barrage was not often regarded as being too effective in its role and became less common or was adapted to distract or confuse the enemy during the raid, or force them to take cover and would also hide the sounds of the raid as it took place. Weapons suited for close quarters fighting were required, like the clubs and shovels mentioned, but the less emphasis on stealth meant pistols were valued over rifles and bayonets as they were too unwieldy for narrow trenches, and grenades were necessary for clearing out enemy dugouts. Trench raids had to be carefully planned and executed very quickly to be successful. There was a good chance the raiders could be bottled up and captured or killed in the treches or mown down by enemy artillery and small arms as the extracted if tey did not get away in a hurry.