A very odd question, but...

[seb phillips]

I was teaching WW1 the other day, and one of my students asked whether anyone ever lived in no mans land. 

My immediate response was: of course not!

But then it occurred to me that I shouldn't dismiss the question without looking into a bit more. I always picture no mans land as a muddy well with shells going off all the time, but  - I know in places conditions could be quite different. The difference was wider - I don't know, maybe there were crazy French farmers who refused to leave their farms, or deserters who set up home there?

Sounded nuts, but I thought I'd run it past wiser heads than mine :-) 

 

 

[Andrew Upton]

3 hours ago, seb phillips said:

I was teaching WW1 the other day, and one of my students asked whether anyone ever lived in no mans land. 

My immediate response was: of course not!

But then it occurred to me that I shouldn't dismiss the question without looking into a bit more. I always picture no mans land as a muddy well with shells going off all the time, but  - I know in places conditions could be quite different. The difference was wider - I don't know, maybe there were crazy French farmers who refused to leave their farms, or deserters who set up home there?

Sounded nuts, but I thought I'd run it past wiser heads than mine :-) 

It seems to be a largely fictitious thing popularized by the TV series Anzacs with perhaps a grain of truth in it - see:

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/230030-anzacs-tv-series/#comment-2287772

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/244629-living-in-no-mans-land-during-the-first-world-war/#comment-2460935

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/219249-awol-soldiers-living-on-old-battlefields/#comment-2170572

 

[museumtom]

I seem to remember bands of deserters living in no-mans land. They are depicted in the Monocled Mutineer too.

[phil andrade]

No Man’s Land varied so much : in some sectors it was sufficiently expansive, and the belligerents sufficiently far apart from each other, as to allow - even if only notionally- people to carry on existing there.

 

Could I cite an example ?  No …. but it might have happened somewhere along those hundreds of miles, in  those “ quiet “ sectors we don’t read much about.

 

Phil

 

 

[phil andrade]

1 hour ago, museumtom said:

I seem to remember bands of deserters living in no-mans land. They are depicted in the Monocled Mutineer too.

If memory of that TV depiction serve me, that was in the deserted Somme battlefield, after the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line.  Not deserters and vagabonds setting up bivouac while active armies were aligned facing each other at close quarters.

 Phil

[Michelle Young]

There is also a novel about a gang living in no man’s land, The Poppy Factory by William Fairchild. I wouldn’t recommend it. 

[Old Forge]

Henry Williamson mentions the rumours of deserters operating in NML -  the later Great War volumes of his novels A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.

Richard

[Moonraker]

There are stories of Australians living rough in the Fovant area of Wiltshire:

A Very Man: Donald Drummond Clarkson 1880-1918 by Gresley Clarkson (Access Press, Australia) records on August 22, 1918: "a band of regular outlaws about here [Fovant] and they can't get them. They reckon they are about, hiding in the woods all day and they come out at night and steal … One of the fellows from Hurdcott … said the night before that two fellows at his camp had been killed – they had sandbagged them and cracked their skulls … I expect they are chaps that were absolute bad eggs in Australia and probably had to get out of it for their own health. Anyhow they have made things so willing that none of us care about being out late at night on our own. There have been about a dozen cases of sandbagging in the last month."

However, a check of local war graves and Australian soldiers' records for mid-August 1918 reveals no deaths that might confirm this story of two soldiers being killed. The unpublished memoirs of local farmer's son Bob Combes  refer to "sandbagging" being an everyday topic: "It had the advantage of stunning the victim if he was hit on the back of the head without causing any serious injury or after-effect other a headache. While he was unconscious, it was a simple matter to empty his pockets, and this nasty little habit made travelling alone a night a hazardous adventure. Unfortunately, sometimes there would be too much sand, or perhaps a stone in the sand, and the attack would prove fatal. Luckily this was seldom the case, but it made villagers and other occupants of the Camp reluctant to venture abroad after dark."

Back in the 1990s I trawled through local newspapers and subsequently though AIF war diaries and coroners' reports and, though admittedly I was not looking out for this topic. I did not come across anything  to substantiate these claims. I suspect there may have been two or three local incidents that were blown out of proportion by gossip.

 

Edited 14 December , 2023 by Moonraker

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

13 hours ago, seb phillips said:

I was teaching WW1 the other day, and one of my students asked whether anyone ever lived in no mans land. 

My immediate response was: of course not!

I think your immedate response is the correct one.
How could one man exist for any length of time in an area bounded by two front lines?
Where would they get food, water etc.
They would have to break through one or other front lines whenever they needed to stock up, and where would they stock up?
They'd have to break into a supply store (probably in a fortfied encampment), carry adequate provisons for several days, re-cross their own front lines (plus second lines plus support trenches back into NML. All wthout being seen or heard.

It's utter nonsense.
It didn't happen.
 

[TEW]

Sounds like the student has read something somewhere regarding these events or myths which is commendable really. You could explore this topic further.

In some places NML was only a matter of yards, in other places much wider.

If someone lived in NML for 48 hrs does that not count?

Ed Stafford or Ray Mears could have thrived!

TEW

[Old Forge]

32 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

It's utter nonsense.
It didn't happen.
 

What comes over in Henry Williamson’s version was that - baseless or not - the rumours of a fair number of (said to be mostly Australian) troops living rough were very current and widely believed by troops in 1918. The ebb and flow of battle during the German spring offensives left large amounts of stores behind. HW used artistic license, of course - witness his alter ego’s bike ride behind the German lines on Christmas Day, 1914. But - he was on the Western Front for extensive periods, from First Ypres to the Armistice. He’s one of the witness voices in eg The Great War series and They Shall Not Grow Old. His stories are founded on his true experiences.

Richard

[WhiteStarLine]

44 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

It's utter nonsense.
It didn't happen.

@seb phillips you must be a really good teacher if you have your students thinking about and querying what you are saying.  Plus your actions in double-checking are commendable.

The ability to have a body of men living in a confined space between two of the most experienced and best armed combatants of the day is fanciful.  Every move you made would risk one or both sides assuming an attack was imminent and unleashing shellfire, gas, aerial reconnaissance, patrols, machine guns and other weapons.  Observation from ground positions was relentless, with snipers, forward observers with stereo viewers, binoculars, telescopes and tethered barrage balloons.  I just can't see how you could bring it off.  You have to eat, sleep, wash, cook, toilet, replenish water and find food.

Technically, there are some shorter examples such as during the Spring Offensive of 1918.  There was definitely a No Mans Land but it was fluid for late March and into the first few days of April.  In the Australian sector on the Somme, as the First Cavalry Division brought the assault to a halt near Corbie and the Australian Third Division engaged the Germans, both sides established trenches between the Ancre and the Somme.  The ruined village of Sailly-le-Sec was between the two forces.  The cavalry raided the town, the Germans attacked, the Australians attacked and eventually the Germans prevailed and the Australians consolidated just the other side of the Somme. 

My grandfather took this photograph and captioned it and the CO of the 43rd Battalion AIF, LTCOL Farrell, wrote these words:

Quote

On March 30, during the Bosche attack on Sailly-le-Sec, when the bombardments was at its height, an old, old man and woman came out of the village - he wheeling a barrow with their belongings and she carrying a big bundle.

And people still talk about just and righteous wars!

This couple left after 2.5 hours of heavy bombardment concluded and just before a full regimental attack covered by barrage and machine gun fire.

There would have been similar stories during the manoeuvre phase where people carried on for as long as they could, temporarily living in No Mans Land until one side prevailed and they abandoned their house. 

[Mark Hone]

As indicated above, there are threads about stories of deserter gangs going back to the early days of the Forum, mainly inspired by viewings of 'Anzacs' and 'The Monocled Mutineer'. As other Forum Pals have pointed out , these tales are mostly about gangs living in devastated areas behind the current front lines, rather than in an active No Man's Land. The phenomenon is recorded in the book 'Myths and Legends of the First World War' by James Hayward (Sutton 2002). He finds an early description of deserter gangs by Osbert Sitwell and quotes from the memoirs of a cavalry officer, Adern Beaman: 'The Squadroon', published in 1920. Here the deserters have degenerated into savagery, plundering the dead and attacking salvage squads rash enough to go into the labyrinth of dug-outs and tunnels they inhabit. As with many classic 'friend of a friend' stories or 'urban legends', though, Beaman only hears about these creatures, he does not see the marauders for himself. Hayward equates this with other widespread 'trench myths' like the mysterious, well-spoken officer who tours the British front-lines at night but turns out to have been a German spy, educated in England. The story has featured in other works of fiction set in the Great War notably 'No Man's Land' by Reginald Hill, published in the mid-1980s, perhaps significantly around the same time as 'Anzacs' and 'The Monocled Mutineer.'

Edited 18 December , 2023 by Mark Hone

[Colin W Taylor]

I agree that deserters living in No Man's Land is unlikely. However, men, sometimes wounded, survived there or just behind recaptured German trenches for several weeks after unsuccessful attacks.

The example below is a former thread from the forum. A further case involving Ptes Shaw and Taylor (IIRC) of the London Regiment in the same area saw two soldiers living in shell holes behind the German front posts for several weeks scrounging food and water from bodies. One later escaped to British trenches and survived his wound but his untreated injuries left him crippled.

There may well be other cases of note. Explaining an example like this will give your student a real-world example of trench life beyond the generalisations of Horrible Histories.

Happy to dig out details of Taylor and Shaw if interested.

 

C

[Colin W Taylor]

Apologies, Privates Taylor and Peters of 2/4th Londons:

 

Missing in No Man’s Land – II

 

After the dust settled an extraordinary story came to light.  On the morning of 7 August 282496 Private James Taylor of 2/4 London Regiment, a stretcher bearer of B Company, crawled into British trenches held by 91 Brigade. He had attacked on 16 June and was one of the few survivors of B Company outside captivity: 

 

‘The Company followed the barrage til we arrived at a sunken road. I never noticed crossing any trench on our way over, but on my way back yesterday I saw the trench which should have been our objective.  The sunken road where my Company halted is about 300 yards East of that trench.  When we arrived at this road, Capt. Bottomley ordered the Company to consolidate for all round defence.  The Bosche attacked by working up a communication trench that was on our flank and by doing so got an enfilade fire to bear on the road.  Capt. Bottomley tried to send several messages through but the runners all got killed. He then tried to get through himself, and was killed before he had gone very far.  He told the men he was going to get reinforcements.  The road we held was subjected to a very heavy fire from our own Artillery, and nearly all our casualties were from that.  I was hit in the thigh about 6 a.m. by an enemy sniper.  I don’t think the Bosche got many prisoners from our Company as nearly all were killed.’[1]

 

Whilst wounded in a shell hole Taylor met 283271 Private Frank Peters of B Company who had a head wound. Peters stayed with Taylor and collected food from the dead and water on their waterproof capes. In spite of a plentiful supply of Bully Beef the biscuits they found were soon rotten.  Whilst searching for food Peters collected identity discs from the dead to hand in when they returned to their battalion. Near the end of Taylor’s confinement in this shell hole Peters went out and didn’t return.  The next night three Germans arrived in this shell hole and Taylor had to feign death to avoid capture. He resorted to crawling back to British lines but only just avoided capture from a further ten Germans when crossing Tunnel Trench on his return.  An officer of 91 Brigade recalled; ‘An extraordinary incident took place last night: a wounded man of the 58^th Division crawled into the South Staffords’ lines, having eked out a miserable existence in a Bosche dug-out 300 yards behind their front line for no less than 7 weeks…’[2] Private Taylor’s wound had healed badly whilst isolated - he would be crippled for life; the fate of Private Peters is unknown.[3]   [Since I wrote this I've found Peters was captured]

 

---

[1] 2/4 Londons WD TNA WO95/3001.

[2] Private Papers of Major Sir Owen Morshead. IWM2005-07-05 13472.

[3] 5461 Private James Taylor enlisted 6 December 1915. He was discharged through his wounds 8 April 1918 aged 25.