no man's land

29th Infantry Battalion, 2nd Division, Canadian Corps. April 9, 1917, advancing over "No Man's Land" through the German barbed wire and heavy fire during the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

No man's land is a term for land that is not occupied or more specifically land that is under dispute between countries or areas that will not occupy it because of fear or uncertainty. During war (especially World War I), it is a term used for the area of land between two enemy trenches that neither side wishes to openly move on or take control of due to fear of being attacked by the enemy in the process. It is also a term for the stretch of land between two border posts, when one exits one country at their border post and when one enters the next country at their border post, usually just a few meters away,^{[citation needed]} though at some (usually remote) border crossings it can be measured in kilometers.

History

Although usually associated with World War I, the term no-man's-land goes back to the early 14th century. The term was first used for a vast wasteland outside the north walls of London where criminals were executed. The term was applied to a little-used area on ships called the forecastle, a place where various ropes, tackle, block, and other supplies were stored. ^[1]

In World War I, traversing no man's land was often a hellish experience for soldiers, ranging from several hundred yards to in some cases as short as 15 yards^{[citation needed]}. Heavily defended by machine guns and riflemen on both sides, it was often riddled with land mines and barbed wire, as well as corpses and wounded soldiers who were not able to make it across the sea of explosions and fire. The area was usually devastated by the warfare, carnage and remains of the artillery. It was open to fire from the opposing trenches and hard going generally slowed down any attempted advance. However, not only were soldiers forced to cross no man's land when advancing, and as the case might be when retreating, but after an attack the stretcher bearers would need to go out into it to bring in the wounded.

British poet Wilfred Owen, later killed in action during the war, wrote in a couple of letters: ^[2]

"No Man's Land is pocketmarked like the body of foulest disease and its odour is the breath of cancer...No Man's Land under snow is like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.

Hideous landscapes, vile noises....everything unnatural, broken, blastered; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug-outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth."

The hell of the no man's land remained largely impenetrable until near the end of World War I, when tanks were able to cross it with little opposition and break the defenders in their trenches.

Cold War

During the Cold War, no man's land was the territory close to the Iron Curtain. Officially the territory belonged to the Eastern Bloc countries, but over the entire Iron Curtain there were several wide tracts of uninhabited land, several hundred meters in width, containing watch towers, minefields, unexploded bombs and other such debris.

See also

• List of disputed or occupied territories
• Marches

References