Bruce
Bairnsfather, the son of Thomas Bairnsfather and Amelia Every, was
born in Muree, India, in 1888. Bruce's father was a Lieutenant in
the Bengal Infantry. After attending schools in India and Stratford-upon-Avon,
Bruce joined the British Army.
Bairnsfather found army life boring and left the Royal Warwickshire
Regiment and enrolled as an art student at the Hassall School of Art.
After completing his training he produced advertising posters for
products such as Lipton Tea, Players's Tobacco and Flowers Beer.
On the outbreak of the First World War Bairnsfather
rejoined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and within a couple of weeks
had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant. After the Battle
of Mons the British Army was desperately
short of trained soldiers and Bairnsfather was quickly rushed to the
Western Front where he served with people
such as Captain Bernard Montgomery
and Lieutenant A. A. Milne.
Bairnsfather, who was put in charge of a Maxim
Machine-Gun section, was shocked by trench-life and even refused
to take leave, fearing that once he left, he would find it too difficult
to return. During the Christmas of 1914, Bairnsfather came close to
being court-martialed after joining German soldiers in what later
became known as the Christmas Truce.
While on the Western Front, Bairnsfather drew pictures of trench life
and in 1915 The Bystander
magazine began publishing his drawings. Bairnsfather's work was extremely
popular with the soldiers in the trenches and this helped sales of
the magazine.
In April 1915, Bairnsfather took part in the
2nd Battle of Ypres. After enduring a
chlorine gas attack, Bairnsfather was
badly wounded by a shell explosion. He was taken back to England and
at London General Hospital his
doctors diagnosed him as suffering from
shellshock. While in hospital, The
Bystander commissioned him to
do a weekly drawing for the magazine. Later
Bairnsfather's drawings were published in a series of books entitled,
Fragments From France.
He also published two books on his war experiences, Bullets
& Billets (1916) and From
Mud to Mufti (1919).
Instead of being sent back to the Western
Front, Captain Bairnsfather was given the task of training new
recruits at the Albany Barracks on the Isle of Wight. It was during
this period that Bairnsfather created his famous cartoon character,
Old Bill. Some people believe
the character was based on his commanding officer in France, Sir
Herbert Plumer, others claimed the inspiration came from Sydney
Godley, the first private to win the Victoria
Cross in the First World War. Later, Godley
played the role of Old Bill to raise funds for the Royal British Legion
Poppy Appeal.
In the 1920s and 1930s several plays and films were produced featuring
Bairnsfather's Old Bill character. Other
books written and drawn by Bairnsfather during this period included
Carry on Sergeant!
(1927), Laughing
Through the Orient (1933), Old
Bill Looks at Europe (1935)
and Old Bill Stands
By (1939).
During the Second World War Captain Bairnsfather
was appointed as an official cartoonist to the American Forces in
Europe. This included contributing drawings for the American Forces
newspaper, Stars
and Stripes. Bruce
Bairnsfather died in 1959.
Bruce
Bairnsfather, A Hopeless Dawn (1916)
(1) Bruce Bairnsfather, Bullets
and Billets (1916)
An extraordinary sensation - the first time of going into trenches.
The first idea that struck me about them was their haphazard design.
There was, no doubt, some very excellent reason for someone making
those trenches as they were; but they really did strike me as curious
when I first saw them.
It was a long and weary night, that first one of mine in the trenches.
Everything was strange and wet and horrid. First of all I had had
to go and fix up my machine guns at various points, and find places
for the gunners to sleep in. This was no easy matter, as many of the
dug-outs had fallen in and floated off down stream.
(2) Bruce Bairnsfather was
put in charge of a machine-gun unit on the Western
Front.
No one gets a better idea of the general lie of the position than
a machine-gun officer. In those early, primitive days, when we had
so few of each thing, we, of course, had few machine guns, and these
had to be sprinkled about a position to the best possible advantage.
The consequence was that people like myself had to cover a considerable
amount of ground before our rambles in the dark each night were done.
One machine gun might be, say, in 'Dead Man Farm'; another at the
'Barrier' near the cross roads; whilst another couple were just at
some effective spot in a trench, or in a commanding position in a
shattered farm or cottage behind the front line trenches.
(3) Bruce
Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets (1916)
It was during this first time up in the trenches that I got a soldier
servant. As I had arrived only just in time to go with the battalion
to the trenches, the acquisition had to be made by a search in the
mud. I found a fellow who hadn't been an officer's servant before,
but he wanted to be. I liked the look of him; so feeling rather like
Robinson Crusoe, when he booked up Friday, "I got me a man."
This fellow of mine did all my cooking, such as it was, and worked
in conjunction with my friend, the platoon commander's servant. Cooking,
at the times I write about, consisted of making innumerable brews
of tea, and opening tins of bully and Maconochie. Occasionally bacon
had to be fried in a mess-tin lid. One day my man soared off into
culinary fancies and curried a Maconochie. I have never quite forgiven
him for this; I am nearly right now.
Soldier servants never had to leave the trench. It was their job to
try and find something to make a fire with, and to do all they could
to keep the water out of the dug-out, a task which not one of us succeeded
in doing.
(4)
Bruce
Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets (1916)
Dug-outs
had no wooden linings in those days; no corrugated iron roofs; no
floorboards. They were just holes in the clay side of the fire trench,
with any old thing for a roof, and old straw or tobacco leaves, which
we pinched from some abandoned farm, for a floor.
(5)
On 24th and 25th December, Bruce
Bairnsfather took part in what became known as the Christmas Truce.
A
voice in the darkness shouted in English, with a strong German accent,
"Come over here!" A ripple of mirth swept along our trench,
followed by a rude outburst of mouth organs and laughter. Presently,
in a lull, one of our sergeants repeated the request, "Come over
here!"
"You come half-way - I come half-way," floated out of the
darkness.
"Come on, then!" shouted the sergeant. "I'm coming
along the hedge!"
After much suspicious shouting and jocular derision from both sides,
our sergeant went along the hedge which ran at right-angles to the
two lines of trenches.
Presently, the sergeant returned.
He had with him a few German cigars and cigarettes which he had exchanged
for a couple of Machonochie's and a tin of Capstan, which he had taken
with him.
On Christmas morning I awoke very early and emerged from my dug-out
into the trench. It was a perfect day. A beautiful, cloudless blue
sky. The ground hard and white, fading off towards the wood in a thin
low-lying mist.
"Fancy all this hate, war, and discomfort on a day like this!
I thought to myself. The whole spirit of Christmas seemed to be there,
so much so that I remember thinking, "This indescribable something
in the air, this Peace and Goodwill feeling, surely will have some
effect on the situation here to-day!"
Walking about the trench a little later, discussing the curious affair
of the night before, we suddenly became aware of the fact we were
seeing a lot of evidences of Germans. Heads were bobbing about and
showing over the parapet in a most reckless way, and, as we looked,
this phenomenon became more and more pronounced.
A complete Boche figure suddenly appeared on the parapet, and looked
about itself. This complaint became infectious. It didn't take "Our
Bert" (the British sergeant who exchanged goods with the Germans
the previous day) long to be up on the skyline. This was the signal
for more Boche anatomy to be disclosed, and this was replied to by
our men, until in less time than it takes to tell, half a dozen or
so of each of the belligerents were outside their trenches and were
advancing towards each other in no-man's land.
I clambered up and over our parapet, and moved out across the field
to look. Clad in a muddy suit of khaki and wearing a sheepskin coat
and Balaclava helmet, I joined the throng about half-way across to
the German trenches.
This was my first real sight of them at close quarters. Here they
were - the actual practical soldiers of the German army. There was
not an atom of hate on either side that day; and yet, on our side,
not for a moment was the will to beat them relaxed. It was just like
the interval between the rounds in a friendly boxing match.
The difference in type between our men and theirs was very marked.
There was no contrasting the spirit of the two parties. Our men, in
their scratch costumes of dirty, muddy khaki, with their various assorted
head-dresses of woollen helmets, mufflers and battered hats, were
a light-hearted, open, humourous collection as opposed to the sombre
demeanour and stolid appearance of the Huns in their grey-green faded
uniforms, top boots, and pork-pie hats.
These devils, I could see, all wanted to be friendly; but none of
them possessed the open, frank geniality of our men. However, everyone
was talking and laughing, and souvenir hunting. Suddenly, one of the
Boches ran back to the trench and presently reappeared with a large
camera. I posed in a mixed group for several photographs, and I have
ever since wished I had fixed up some arrangement for getting a copy.
(6)
Bruce
Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets (1916)
It
was quite the worse trench I have ever seen. A number of men were
in it, standing and leaning, silently enduring the following conditions.
It was quite dark. The enemy were about two hundred yards away, or
rather less. It was raining, and the trench contained over three feet
of water. The men, therefore, were standing up to the waist in water.
The front parapet was nothing but a rough earth mound which, owing
to the water about, was practically non-existent. They were all wet
through and through, with a great deal of their equipment below the
water at the bottom of the trench. There they were, taking it all
as a necessary part of a great game; not a grumble nor a comment.
(7) In April 1915, Bruce
Bairnsfather took part in the offensive at Ypres.
Now we were in it! Bullets were flying through the air in all directions.
A few men had gone down already, and no wonder - the air was thick
with bullets. In front of me an officer was hurrying along when I
saw him throw up his hands and collapse on the ground. I hurried across
to him, and lifted his head on to my knee. He couldn't speak and was
rapidly turning a deathly pallor. I undid his equipment and the buttons
of his tunic as fast as I could, to find out where he had been shot.
Right through the chest. The left side of his shirt, near his heart,
was stained deep with blood. He was a captain in the Canadians.
All movement in the attack had now ceased, but the rifle and shell
fire was as strong as ever. I got hold of a subaltern and together
we ran back with a stretcher to where I left the captain. We lifted
him on the stretcher. He seemed a bit better, but his breathing was
very difficult. How I managed to hold up that stretcher I don't know.
I was just verging on complete exhaustion by this time. We got him
in and put him down in an outbuilding which had been turned into a
temporary dressing station.
I left him, and went across towards
the farm. As I went I heard the enormous ponderous, gurgling, rotating
sound of large shells coming. I looked to my left. Four columns of
black smoke and earth shot up a hundred feet into the air, not eighty
yards away. Then four mighty reverberating explosions that rent the
air.
As I was on the sloping bank of the gully I heard a colossal rushing
swish in the air, and then didn't hear the resultant crash. All seemed
dull and foggy; a sort of silence, worse than all the shelling, surrounded
me. I lay in a filthy stagnant ditch covered with mud and slime from
head to foot. I suddenly started to tremble all over. I couldn't grasp
where I was. I lay and trembled. I had been blown up by a shell.
I lay there some little time, I imagine, with a most peculiar sensation.
All fear of shells and explosions had left me. I still heard them
dropping about and exploding, but I listened to them and watched them
as calmly as one would watch an apple fall off a tree. I could not
make myself out. Was I right or wrong? I tried to get up, and then
I knew. The spell was broken. I shook all over, and had to to lie
still, with tears pouring down my face. I could see my part in the
battle was over.
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