(1) There were certainly 'quiet' sectors on the Western Front, but none could be described as 'silent', where a man going into the forward lines could be confident that he wouldn't meet a sudden, random, violent end. 'Live and let live' existed and is well documented, but it was always a tenuous thing, liable to break down at any moment.

I can't recommend highly enough Tony Ashworth's 1980 book Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System (Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke) for an insight into this element of the war. His study challenges the historical image of the Western Front as a ceaseless bloody meat-grinder that prevails today, and also reveals that personal experience often did not match the expectations of soldiers who had been trained to be ready for non-stop fighting in the trenches:

As part of their training, soldiers acquired the official image of trench war: perpetual conflict. But on a quiet front: ‘uncanny stillness in the air, broken occasionally by some sporadic firing. It was very difficult to imagine that this place had any connection with a world war – it seemed so quiet’. (Ashworth, p.29)

Surprise at just how quiet and lightly-manned the front line could be is a recurring theme through memoirs and personal accounts, as is that of the 'mutual obligation element': opposing troops not interfering with one another if possible, allowing enemy patrols and working parties to proceed unhindered, and not taking shots at opportunity targets in order to avoid the inevitable retaliation. For example:

Mr Bosche ain’t a bad feller. You leave ‘im alone: ‘e’ll leave you alone.

S Gillon, The Story of the 29th Division, London, Nelson & Sons

and

...without at all fraternising, we refrain from interfering with Brother Bosche seventy yards away, as long as he is kind to us...

[Trench fighters] have found out that to provide discomfort for the other is but a round about way of providing it for themselves...

All patrols – English and German – are much averse to the death or glory principle; so, on running up against one another… both pretend that they are Levites and the other is a Good Samaritan – and pass by on the other side, no word spoken. For either side to bomb the other would be a useless violation of the unwritten laws that govern the relations of combatants permanently within a hundred yards of each other

Charles Sorley, 7/Suffolk Regiment, The Letters of Charles Sorley, Cambridge, The University Press, 1919

and

[an infantry section 'standing-to' at dawn] We could see the German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing again.

“Nark the doins, Bill, nark it’, Goliath shouted, mimicking the Cockney accent, “You’ll annoy those good people across the way.”

“An’ if I do!”

“They may fire at you!” said monumental Goliath with fine irony’.

MacGill, 18th London Regiment, in The Red Horizon

and

In the ordinary run of events we were told not to fire unless there was a very good reason. That was because if you took a pot shot at something it would be likely to bring the roof down and the other side would go mad for a few minutes firing with everything they’d got.

related in Tales of the Old Soldiers, Tom Quinn, 1993, Stroud

Ashworth goes into some detail how these 'live and let live' arrangements could evolve, covering everything from simple good gamesmanship and unspoken self-preservation of two groups of heavily armed men forced by circumstance to live in opposing ditches perhaps a few dozen yards from each other, through to brief hastily arranged truces to collect the wounded, through to prolonged semi-official cease-fires between opposing units, communicated by sign-boards held above the parapet or messages thrown from one trench to the other. He gives an example of ritualised fire on a quiet sector where a British unit was facing a Saxon unit: the supporting artillery had to fire a number of rounds each day to meet the ammo quota statistics imposed by Divisional HQ, so the guns would fire a salvo at a specific time on a specific area, like clockwork. This arrangement broke down one day, however, with a whirlwind of shelling which caused casualties on the British side. The Saxon infantry sent an apology saying that a Prussian artillery unit had rotated into the area, but the fragile peace had been shattered and the pace of local fighting picked up and it was a quiet sector no more.

This is indicative of how tenuous the 'quietness' of a sector could be and how rapidly 'live and let live' could break down. It ran, after all, completely contrary to the orders and intentions of senior officers and strategists, who (on the British side at least) saw trench warfare as a temporary phase of the war, and demanded that aggression and fighting spirit be kept up amongst the troops at all times. While the generals and brigadiers were rarely in the front line to supervise day-to-day behaviour, the vast bureaucracy of war exerted a 'control function' over junior officers in the forward trenches. Company commanders had to make multiple daily reports back to Brigade, and from these statistics could be compiled which would indicate if a particular unit or sector was being insufficiently aggressive.

A case of trench feet will provoke far more correspondence and censure than a heavy casualty list.

R.Feilding, 6/Connaught Rangers, War Letters to a Wife, London, The Medici Society, 1929

In this example, cases of trench foot indicate to Brigade possible low morale and inertia amongst a unit, whilst a number of combat casualties indicates that the battalion has good fighting spirit. Similarly, patrol activity was demanded by high command, but it might be ritualised and reports back to Brigade HQ ‘cooked’ by those in the line. Some brigadiers began to insist that samples of German wire were brought back by patrols to prove that they had actually crossed no man’s land and not just stayed close to their own trench. According to Ashworth, however, in the 14th Division a patrol found a coil of German wire which they placed in a sap just in front of the line; on every patrol they would slope off to the sap for a smoke and a chat and would snip off a piece of wire. Some officers kept a coil of German wire in the dugout and sent a piece to Brigade when asked for proof of patrol efficiency.