



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Steven desJardins, and Distributed
Proofreaders





Bullets & Billets

By Bruce Bairnsfather

1916

TO MY OLD PALS,
"BILL," "BERT," AND "ALF,"
WHO HAVE SAT IN THE MUD WITH ME




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
  Landing at Havre--Tortoni's--Follow the tram lines--Orders
  for the Front.

CHAPTER II
  Tortuous travelling--Clippers and tablets--Dumped at a
  siding--I join my Battalion.

CHAPTER III
  Those Plugstreet trenches--Mud and rain--Flooded out--A
  hopeless dawn.

CHAPTER IV
  More mud--Rain and bullets--A bit of cake--"Wind up"--Night
  rounds.

CHAPTER V
  My man Friday--"Chuck us the biscuits"--Relieved--Billets.

CHAPTER VI
  The Transport Farm--Fleeced by the Flemish--Riding--Nearing
  Christmas.

CHAPTER VII
  A projected attack---Digging a sap--An 'ell of a night--The
  attack--Puncturing Prussians.

CHAPTER VIII
  Christmas Eve--A lull in hate--Briton cum Boche.

CHAPTER IX
  Souvenirs--A ride to Nieppe--Tea at H.Q.--Trenches once more.

CHAPTER X
  My partial escape from the mud--The deserted village--My
  "cottage."

CHAPTER XI
  Stocktaking--Fortifying--Nebulous Fragments.

CHAPTER XII
  A brain wave--Making a "funk hole"--Plugstreet Wood--Sniping.

CHAPTER XIII
  Robinson Crusoe--That turbulent table.

CHAPTER XIV
  The Amphibians--Fed-up, but determined--The gun parapet.

CHAPTER XV
  Arrival of the "Johnsons"--"Where did that one go?"--The
  First Fragment dispatched--The exodus--Where?

CHAPTER XVI
  New trenches--The night inspection--Letter from the
  _Bystander_.

CHAPTER XVII
  Wulverghem--The Douve--Corduroy boards--Back at our farm.

CHAPTER XVIII
  The painter and decorator--Fragments forming--Night on the
  mud prairie.

CHAPTER XIX
  Visions of leave--Dick Turpin--Leave!

CHAPTER XX
  That Leave train--My old pal--London and home--The call of
  the wild.

CHAPTER XXI
  Back from leave--That "blinkin' moon"--Johnson 'oles--Tommy
  and "frightfulness"--Exploring expedition.

CHAPTER XXII
  A daylight stalk--The disused trench--"Did they see me?"--A
  good sniping position.

CHAPTER XXIII
  Our moated farm--Wulverghem--The Cure's house--A shattered
  Church--More "heavies"--A farm on fire.

CHAPTER XXIV
  That ration fatigue--Sketches in request--Bailleul--Baths and
  lunatics--How to conduct a war.

CHAPTER XXV
  Getting stale--Longing for change--We leave the Douve--On the
  march--Spotted fever--Ten days' rest.

CHAPTER XXVI
  A pleasant change--Suzette, Berthe and Marthe--"La jeune
  fille farouche"--Andre.

CHAPTER XXVII
  Getting fit--Caricaturing the Cure--"Dirty work ahead"--A
  projected attack--Unlooked-for orders.

CHAPTER XXVIII
  We march for Ypres--Halt at Locre--A bleak camp and meagre
  fare--Signs of battle--First view of Ypres.

CHAPTER XXIX
  Getting nearer--A lugubrious party--Still nearer--Blazing
  Ypres--Orders for attack.

CHAPTER XXX
  Rain and mud--A trying march--In the thick of it--A wounded
  officer--Heavy shelling--I get my "quietus!"

CHAPTER XXXI
  Slowly recovering--Field hospital--Ambulance train--Back in
  England.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Bruce Bairnsfather: a photograph

The Birth of "Fragments": Scribbles on the farmhouse walls

That Astronomical Annoyance, the Star Shell

"Plugstreet Wood"

A Hopeless Dawn

The usual line in Billeting Farms

"Chuck us the biscuits, Bill. The fire wants mendin'"

"Shut that blinkin' door. There's a 'ell of a draught in 'ere"

A Memory of Christmas, 1914

The Sentry

A Messines Memory: "'Ow about shiftin' a bit further down the road, Fred?"

"Old soldiers never die"

Photograph of the Author. St. Yvon, Christmas Day, 1914

Off "in" again

"Poor old Maggie! She seems to be 'avin' it dreadful wet at 'ome!"

The Tin-opener

"They're devils to snipe, ain't they, Bill?"

Old Bill




FOREWORD


_Down South, in the Valley of the Somme, far
from the spots recorded in this book, I began
to write this story._

_In billets it was. I strolled across the old
farmyard and into the wood beyond. Sitting
by a gurgling little stream, I began, with the
aid of a notebook and a pencil, to record the
joys and sorrows of my first six months in
France._

_I do not claim any unique quality for these
experiences. Many thousands have had the
same. I have merely, by request, made a
record of my times out there, in the way that
they appeared to me_.

BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER.




CHAPTER I

LANDING AT HAVRE--TORTONI'S--FOLLOW
THE TRAM LINES--ORDERS FOR THE FRONT


[Illustration: G]

Gliding up the Seine, on a transport crammed to the lid with troops, in
the still, cold hours of a November morning, was my debut into the war.
It was about 6 a.m. when our boat silently slipped along past the great
wooden sheds, posts and complications of Havre Harbour. I had spent most
of the twelve-hour trip down somewhere in the depths of the ship,
dealing out rations to the hundred men that I had brought with me from
Plymouth. This sounds a comparatively simple process, but not a bit of
it. To begin with, the ship was filled with troops to bursting point,
and the mere matter of proceeding from one deck to another was about as
difficult as trying to get round to see a friend at the other side of
the ground at a Crystal Palace Cup final.

I stood in a queue of Gordons, Seaforths, Worcesters, etc., slowly
moving up one, until, finally arriving at the companion (nearly said
staircase), I tobogganed down into the hold, and spent what was left of
the night dealing out those rations. Having finished at last, I came to
the surface again, and now, as the transport glided along through the
dirty waters of the river, and as I gazed at the motley collection of
Frenchmen on the various wharves, and saw a variety of soldiery, and a
host of other warlike "props," I felt acutely that now I was _in_ the
war at last--the real thing! For some time I had been rehearsing in
England; but that was over now, and here I was--in the common or garden
vernacular--"in the soup."

At last we were alongside, and in due course I had collected that
hundred men of mine, and found that the number was still a hundred,
after which I landed with the rest, received instructions and a guide,
then started off for the Base Camps.

[Illustration: "Rations"]

These Camps were about three miles out of Havre, and thither the whole
contents of the ship marched in one long column, accompanied on either
side by a crowd of ragged little boys shouting for souvenirs and
biscuits. I and my hundred men were near the rear of the procession, and
in about an hour's time arrived at the Base Camps.

I don't know that it is possible to construct anything more atrociously
hideous or uninteresting than a Base Camp. It consists, in military
parlance, of nothing more than:--

  Fields, grassless   1
  Tents, bell       500

In fact, a huge space, once a field, now a bog, on which are perched
rows and rows of squalid tents.

I stumbled along over the mud with my troupe, and having found the
Adjutant, after a considerable search, thought that my task was over,
and that I could slink off into some odd tent or other and get