In No Mans Land
In No Man's Land: The Dread Territory Which Belongs to Neither German nor Briton~~~~Royal engineers, working in the dark of No Man's Land to construct barbed wire barriers in front of British trenches, are exposed by German magnesium flares, giving this illustration a Caravaggioesque quality. Such work was extremely risky, or nervy, as one Royal Engineer described it to The Times. He went on to say, ..it is done in the open and out of the kindly cover afforded by a trench... fortunate indeed is the working party if the enemy does not hear the sound of the picket being driven into the ground and open fire... Flares lasted for 15 seconds, an eternity for men who had to throw themselves flat to the ground and lie inert until darkness returned. Bruce Bairnsfather depicted a similar situation in a cartoon accompanied by a quote from Wolfam's aria in Tannhauser.~~~~'Oh star of eve, whose tender bean~~Falls on my spirit's troubled dream
