No man's land

No man's land is a term for a land that is not occupied or more specifically land that is under dispute between parties that will not occupy it because of fear or uncertainty. It is also a term for the stretch of land between two border posts, between when one exits one country at their border post and when one enters the next country at their border post, usually just a few metres away, though at some (usually remote) border crossings it can be measured in kilometers.

History

Although most 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. Often the rotting bodies of these hanged, impaled, and beheaded criminals were left in the open in full display, almost as a warning to potential lawbreakers. This area became to be known as no-man's land since no one would seek to claim this land for ownership. Roughly 400 years later, the term was applied to a little used place on ship's called the forecastle, a place where various ropes, tackle, block and other supplies were stored.

The term was first applied in a military sense in about 1900 where its meaning referred to the area between hostile entrenched lines. The phrase probably gained wide usage during World War I after it was used in a dispatch that was printed in the Times newspaper by (Colonel) E Swinton writing as "Eyewitness". No man's land would be one of the definitive phrases that characterized the horrors of World War I, a "neutral" area between opposing trenches that saw fierce fighting and large scale human carnage.
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. Heavily defended by machine guns and riflemen on both sides, they also were often riddled with land mines and barbed wire, as well as corpses and wounded soldiers who were not able to make it back to their own trenches. Intense bombing and artillery often blanketed the no man's land in a sea of explosions and fire. The area was usually devastated by the warfare, leaving little to no foliage or cover of any sort. The artillery left only disturbed ground and craters. 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:

"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."

In another letter, Owen wrote:

"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 and such.

See also

* List of disputed or occupied territories