Project Gutenberg's Fragments From France, by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

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Title: Fragments From France

Author: Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

Release Date: July 2, 2008 [EBook #25951]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRAGMENTS FROM FRANCE ***

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_By Bruce Bairnsfather_

Bullets and Billets

Fragments from France

A Few Fragments from His Life

FRAGMENTS FROM FRANCE

BY

CAPTAIN BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER

AUTHOR OF "BULLETS AND BILLETS"

[Illustration]

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1917

FOREWORD

_By the Editor of "The Bystander."_

[Illustration: W]HEN Tommy went out to the great war, he went smiling,
and singing the latest ditty of the halls. The enemy scowled. War, said
his professors of kultur and his hymnsters of hate, could never be waged
in the Tipperary spirit, and the nation that sent to the front soldiers
who sang and laughed must be the very decadent England they had all
along denounced as unworthy of world-power.

I fear the enemy will be even more infuriated when he turns over the
pages of this book. In it the spirit of the British citizen soldier,
who, hating war as he hated hell, flocked to the colours to have his
whack at the apostles of blood and iron, is translated to cold and
permanent print. Here is the great war reduced to grim and gruesome
absurdity. It is not fun poked by a mere looker-on, it is the fun felt
in the war by one who has been through it.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER.]

Captain Bruce Bairnsfather has stayed at that "farm" which is portrayed
in the double page of the book; he has endured that shell-swept "'ole"
that is depicted on the cover; he has watched the disappearance of that
"blinkin' parapet" shown on one page; has had his hair cut under fire as
shown on another. And having been through it all, he has just put down
what he has seen and heard and felt and smelt and--laughed at.

Captain Bairnsfather went to the front in no