Welcome to You Ask Andy

Orin Stewart, age 8, of Stettler, Alberta, Canada, for his question:

Where is No man's land?

No man's land is not a country so you won't find it on an ordinary map. From its name, you expect it to be land that does not belong to anybody. In a way, this may be true. Sometimes the boundary between two countries is quite wide. The strip in the middle doesn't belong to either side. It may be called No man's land, though as a rule both sides have a right to share it for picnics, and such things.

To a soldier, No man's land is no place for picnics. It is the stretch of land between the two rows of facing enemy trenches. Sailors also have a No man's land on a big ship. The two sides of a ship are called port and starboard. The strip down the middle sometimes is called No man's land to mean something else. On a well run ship, each sailor has his special duties. But there are, of course, a few duties left over that anybody can perform. On shipboard, sometimes these are called the no man's land duties.

 

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