WWI Warfare: No Man's Land

No Man's land was the ground between the two opposing side's trenches. During nightfall both sides would usually dispatch parties consisting of a group of soldiers to either spy on the enemy or to repair or extend barbed wire fence posts. The ground was very shifted because constant artillery shelling was common. The ground would be quickly reduced to a barren wasteland comprised of destroyed and uprooted vegetation, mud-soaked craters, and rotting corpses. Injured men that fell in No Man's Land would be brought in by parties under the cover of darkness in order to prevent being seen by the enemy. No Man's land would sometimes contain broken and abandoned military equipment and supplies that were left behind in cases of heavy shelling. Advances across No Man's Land were hardly ever made for it was a struggle to either not be blown up by a shell or entangled in a barbed wire net. Shell holes were often used as protection against further shelling and as spy posts to send back reports on the enemy. This information would include observations of enemy supplies, ammunition, and weaponry and would be sent back to men of higher ranks in the unit. Occasionally opposing parties would meet in a shell hole and would engage into hand to hand combat, a much more brutal form of fighting.