Bullets Billets

Bullets & Billets

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Title: Bullets & Billets
Author: Bruce Bairnsfather
Release Date: February 23, 2004 [EBook #11232]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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 Cur��'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"--Andr��.
CHAPTER XXVII
Getting fit--Caricaturing the Cur��--"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