Reading Your Shirt: The act of Chatting.
Red Tabs: Slang for Staff Officers, after the red tabs worn on the collars of their tunics.
Revetment: Any material used to strengthen a trench wall against collapse; wooden planking, brushwood wattling, corrugated iron, etc.
RFC: Royal Flying Corps of the British Army.
Sally Port: Small, hidden passage out under the parapet of a fire trench used for sorties into No Man’s Land.
Section: A quarter of a platoon, usually consisting of 12 men under the charge of an NCO.
Subaltern: Or Sub; a commissioned officer under the rank of captain; first or second lieutenant.
Traverse: Thick sandbag partition built in trenches to prevent enfilading enemy fire and to limit the effect of any explosions. In fire trenches they were used to create fire bays. Also; purposely-built changes in angle of direction in any trench to achieve the same effect.
SAA: Small Arms Ammunition; rifle and revolver ammunition.
Sans German: Village of Saint Germaine, five miles from Harcourt Wood, behind the British lines.
Signalese: A phonetic alphabet.
SMLE: Short Magazine Lee Enfield. Standard issue British rifle with a 10 round magazine.
Sponson: The side-mounted gun turret of a tank, taken from the naval term. The Mark I ‘male’ tank had no central-mounted roof turret, like later tanks, but two side mounted sponsons, one on either side. Each sponson was armed with a six pounder gun and a Hotchkiss machine gun.
Stand To: Stand to Arms. Highest state of alert when all men should be ready for immediate action, weapons at the ready. Occurred regularly in the trenches at dawn and dusk to repel any attempted attacks. See also Hate, the.
Toffee Apple: nickname for a type of British trench mortar bomb.
VAD: Voluntary Aid Detachment, women volunteers providing auxiliary nursing assistance to the Red Cross and registered nurses.
Very Light: A white or coloured flare fired from a Very Pistol. Used for signalling or illumination at night.
Vickers Machine gun: Water-cooled, belt-fed, machine gun. Heavy and bulky, but more accurate than the Lewis.
Whizz-Bang: A German 77mm high velocity shell.
Woolly Bear: A German shrapnel air burst shell, that left a distinctive cloud in the air.
About the Author
Pat Kelleher is a freelance writer. He has written for magazines, animation and radio. He served his time writing for a wide variety of TV licensed characters, translating them into audio books, novels and comics. Yes, he’s written for that. And that. And even, you know, them. He has several non-fiction books to his credit and his educational strips and stories for the RSPB currently form the mainstays of their Youth publications. Somehow he has steadfastly managed to avoid all those careers and part-time jobs that look so good on a dust jacket.
Copyright
ISBN (.epub version): 978-1-84997-212-3
ISBN (.mobi version): 978-1-84997-213-0
First published in 2010 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.
Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver
Cover art: Pye Parr
Junior Editor: Jenni Hill
Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece
Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley
Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley
No Man’s World™ created by Pat Kelleher
Copyright © 2010 Rebellion. All rights reserved.
No Man’s World™, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.