Rats may scamper across it and remain rats. Birds may fly above it and remain birds; they may alight and tear and eat and prick up their heads to stare motionless and beady for a moment before pecking and eating again, and remain birds. But no man may venture into this space between the lines and remain a man. That is the difference. No man may enter, either stealthily on his belly alone, or noisily on two feet racing through glue with a thousand versions of himself firing, falling, on either side as far as the eye can see, and remain a man. It is possible to become a man once more if you make it back behind your line again, but you suspend your humanity for your sojourn in between. That is why the place is called No Man's Land.