IDIOMS

NO MAN'S LAND

The British Regular Army did not widely employ the term when they arrived in France in 1914. The terms used most frequently at the start of the war to describe the area between the trench lines included 'between the trenches' or 'between the lines'. The term 'no man's land' was first used in a military context by soldier and historian Ernest Swinton in his short story The Point of View. Swinton used the term in war correspondence on the Western Front, with specific mention of the terms with respect to the Race to the Sea in late 1914. The Anglo-German Christmas true of 1914 brought the term into common use, and thereafter it appeared frequently in official communiqués, newspaper reports, and personnel correspondences of the members of the British Expeditionary Force.

In World War I, no man's land often ranged from several hundred yards to in some cases less than 10 yards. Heavily defended by machine guns, mortars, artillery and riflemen on both sides, it was often riddled with barbed wire and rudimentary improvised land mines, 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 stretchers bearers would need to go out into it to bring in the wounded. No man's land remained a regular feature of the battlefield until near the end of World War I, when mechanized weapons (ie. tanks) made entrenched lines less of an obstacle