UNLIMITED Audiobooks and eBooks
Over 40,000 books & works on all major devices
Get ALL YOU CAN for FREE for 30 days!
Bullets & Billets
Bruce Bairnsfather
Book Overview:
A front-line view of life in the trenches of the Western Front in the early part of 1914-1915. Told by Lieutenant (later Captain) Bruce Bairnsfather, cartoonist, whose Alf, Bert, and Old Bill were forerunners to Bill Mauldin and his Willie and Joe in World War II. This volume traces Bairnsfather's service as a machine gun officer from its inception until he was removed from the battlefield by the intense shelling during the Second Battle of Ypres (April 1915). It is told with a wry, ironic, grim humor often possessed by those who have endured shells, bullets, floods, mud, bully beef, maconochie, and a surfeit of plum and apple jam. His participation in the unofficial Christmas Truce of 1914 (for which he was investigated in view of a court-martial) is documented as well as the horrors of war at close quarters.
A front-line view of life in the trenches of the Western Front in the early part of 1914-1915. Told by Lieutenant (later Captain) Bruce Bairnsfather, cartoonist, whose Alf, Bert, and Old Bill were forerunners to Bill Mauldin and his Willie and Joe in World War II. This volume traces Bairnsfather's service as a machine gun officer from its inception until he was removed from the battlefield by the intense shelling during the Second Battle of Ypres (April 1915). It is told with a wry, ironic, grim humor often possessed by those who have endured shells, bullets, floods, mud, bully beef, maconochie, and a surfeit of plum and apple jam. His participation in the unofficial Christmas Truce of 1914 (for which he was investigated in view of a court-martial) is documented as well as the horrors of war at close quarters.
How does All You Can Books work?
All You Can Books gives you UNLIMITED access to over 40,000 Audiobooks, eBooks, and Foreign Language courses. Download as many audiobooks, ebooks, language audio courses, and language e-workbooks as you want during the FREE trial and it's all yours to keep even if you cancel during the FREE trial. The service works on any major device including computers, smartphones, music players, e-readers, and tablets. You can try the service for FREE for 30 days then it's just $19.99 per month after that. So for the price everyone else charges for just 1 book, we offer you UNLIMITED audio books, e-books and language courses to download and enjoy as you please. No restrictions.
I had the different machine-gun sections to collect from their various guns, and this not until the relieving sections had all turned up. It was a good two hours' job getting all the sections with their guns, ammunition and various extras finally collected together in the dark a mile back, ready to put all the stuff in the limbers, and so back to billets. When all was fixed up I gave the order and off we started, plodding along back down the narrow, dreary road towards our resting-place. But it was quite a cheerful tramp, knowing as we did that we were going to four days' comparative rest, and, anyway, safety.
On we went down the long, flat, narrow roads, occasionally looking round to see the faint flicker of a star shell showing over the tops of the trees, and to think momentarily of . . . Read More
Try now for FREE!
"Love your service - thanks so much for what you do!"
- Customer Cathryn Mazer
"I did not realize that you would have so many audio books I would enjoy"
- Customer Sharon Morrison
"For all my fellow Audio Book & E-Book regulars:
This is about as close to nirvana as I have found!"
- Twitter post from @bobbyekat
Community Reviews
The book is a memoir of the Great War experiences of the author, famous for creating the character of Old Bill in his cartoons for the magazine
The Bystander
and later collected in various
Fragments from France
booklets, from late 1914 till he is wounded during the Second Battle of Ypres in
A surprisingly good book. I read it because I was interested in Bairnsfather's war drawings, but he turns out to be a really good writer was well. He provides a pretty straightforward account of his daily life for 6 months in the trenches early in the Great War, which gives, I think, a lot of insigh
Bruce Bairnsfather successfully managed to balance humor and introspection with the horrific realities of the war in this marvelous memoir.
I love this book, Bruce Bairnsfather is a famous satirist artist of WWI creating the character ol' Bill.
This is a memoir of his time in WWI working on the front with his machine gunners.
You can feel both his struggle and his humor on the entire situation.
I recommend reading this as well as readin
Quite different than any other firsthand account of WWI. It's funny (I know!) and it was just a real delight (I know!) to read.