My grandfather's commanding officer is killed in action

Today, reading New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18, I learn that my grandfather's commanding officer was the New Zealand battery commander to lose his life in the war. It happened within two months of the New Zealanders at Armentières. The 1st Battalion of the Otago Regiment staged a raid on 13 July but it failed due to"the totally unexpected and withering fire which the enemy brought to bear on the party". The New Zealanders' heavy guns were unable to neutralize it, despite all three groups of artillery being used. They were unable to do much damage to over twenty enemy batteries.

The guns of the 4th (Howitzer) Battery  of the 3rd Brigade (my grandfather's) "had been dragged from the pits into the open in order to obtain the necessary switch, and during the height of the firing the enemy sprayed the position with shrapnel." It was in this encounter that commanding officer Captain J. L. H. Turner, M.C. lost his life, and command passed to Captain D. E. Gardner.

Harassing the enemy amid "peaceful agrarian industry"

The New Zealand Division finally moved into position on the frontlines at Armentières between the 16th and 19th of May 2016, and command of the artillery passed to New Zealand Divisional Artillery Headquarters at 10 a.m. on May 19th, according to New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18.

It was a very different scenario to Gallipoli - in landscape and population. Says the official history:

the first thing that might be said, so far at least as the artillery were concerned, is that they in no sense approximated to anything that had been expected or imagined. All preconceived notions relative to the place and the people under the existing conditions of war were dispelled on a first introduction to the new environment. After the active preliminaries of taking over the positions had been completed, attention was at once held by the calm, philosophic, but yet active and businesslike attitude of mind with which the people had accepted the conditions that suddenly confronted them. Nothing in the experiences of active warfare afforded a study so impressive and in many respects so interesting. The mind does not readily associate peaceful agrarian industry with the activities of war; but here in the open country, day by day, entirely regardless, or perhaps utterly oblivious, of danger, were the peasantry, men and boys too old or too young for war service, and even women, engaged in the labour of the fields in front of the British gun positions, and within close range of the guns of a merciless enemy.

Armentières was a busy manufacturing town of about thirty thousand, "drab and uninteresting in many ways, and wearing an air of industry rather than of affluence. ... In leisure times at Armentieres the soldier could go shopping, though the selection was limited and prices were high, and before returning to the guns or the billet enjoy afternoon tea, or sit in one of the numberless little estaminets [small cafes] and drink the pale beer or vin ordinaire which formed their stock-in-trade."

Yet despite this seeming peaceful, almost benign, atmosphere:

The first duty of battery commanders on taking over their new positions was to register the enemy front line and all salient points within their group zone, and also an S.O.S. line on which a barrage could be laid down at any point on the Divisional front threatened by the enemy. Measures of defence having thus been decided on, a policy of active shooting was at once adopted. Exercises in concerted shooting were carried out with the dual purpose of obtaining proficiency in their execution and of harassing the enemy.