Bullets & Billets
Bullets & Billets
Bruce Bairnsfather arrived in France in 1914 with the optimism of a newly commissioned officer and left with something far more valuable: an unflinching, wildly funny account of what it actually meant to fight in the Great War. Bullions & Billets is not a烈士 memoir or a grand strategic meditation. It is the voice of a man in the mud, watching the organizational chaos around him, and finding the only sane response to be laughter. From the moment he lands at Havre into what he describes as controlled pandemonium, Bairnsfather documents the absurd disconnect between military planning and battlefield reality with a cartoonist's eye for the telling detail and a soldier's bitter understanding of what that disconnect costs. The trenches, the endless marches, the cold, the camaraderie, the near-misses and the friends who didn't come back all pass through his particular lens: wry, humane, never self-pitying. This is WWI as lived, not as commemorated. For readers who want to understand what it felt like to be there, not as history but as experience, Bairnsfather's voice remains indispensable. His humor is not evasion. It is survival.
Editions
X-Ray
“That Astronomical Annoyance, the Star Shell, Which Momentarily Enables You to Scrutinize the Kind of Mud You Are In.””
— Bruce Bairnsfather
“Whenever I don't state the climatic conditions, read "raining.””
— Bruce Bairnsfather
“To give a recipe for getting a rough idea, in case you want to, I recommend the following procedure. Select a flat ten-acre ploughed field, so sited that all the surface water of the surrounding country drains into it. Now cut a zig-zag slot about four feet deep and three feet wide diagonally across, dam off as much water as you can so as to leave about a hundred yards of squelchy mud; delve out a hole at one side of the slot, then endeavour to live there for a month on bully beef and damp biscuits, whilst a friend has instructions to fire at you with his Winchester every time you put your head above the surface.””
— Bruce Bairnsfather
“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:”
— Bruce Bairnsfather
“...I found that much of the romance had left the trenches. The old days, from the beginning to July, 1915, were all so delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sadly needs”
— Bruce Bairnsfather
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Bullets & Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Bullets & Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Bairnsfather, Bruce. Bullets & Billets. Lex, lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9.Bairnsfather, B. (n.d.). Bullets & Billets. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9Bairnsfather, Bruce. Bullets & Billets. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/bullets-billets-57766cea-8d6c-43d2-88fe-bb31ecd031f9.
