Chapter VII: Part 7

The newspapers will have told you something of our little push, and I will not trouble you with any technical detail. We advanced over a very narrow front after a short but intense bombardment. Our friend led the right half of "A" because I did not want to rob his own Platoon of his immediate influence. His is No. 1. The pace was hot, despite the torn and treacherous nature of the ground. The right half did even better than my half, and stormed the first Boche line with extraordinary dash and vigour. It seemed as though nothing could stop their impetuosity; and in the midst of the tremendous din I caught little waves of their shouting more than once.

Our friend had crossed the first line, and successfully led his men to the very edge of the second line, shouting to his men to join him in taking it, when the shell burst that brought him down. The same shell must have laid some Boches low, if that is any consolation. Not that we need any consolation. I feel sure you will agree with me in that.

But I want to tell you that the wounds in the right arm--not serious, I am thankful to say--were not from the same shell. They came in the neighbourhood of the first Boche line. That same right arm (after it was wounded), carrying a loaded stick, knocked up a Boche bayonet that was due to reach the chest of a man in No. 1 Platoon and then served to support the same man on the parapet of the Boche trench--he was already wounded--for a few moments till a stretcher-bearer got him. It was not possible for our friend to stay with him, of course. A few seconds later he was leading his men full pelt towards the second line; and all that after his first wound. I thought you would like to know that. Our C.O. knows it, and I venture to hope it will find mention in dispatches.

And now with regard to his condition. Whilst he is not quite so forward as he thinks--there is, of course, no question of his coming back to duty in a few days, as he fancies--there is, I think, no cause whatever for anxiety. In fact, the M.O. at the Clearing Station assured me of so much. His general health is excellent; nothing septic has intervened; it is simply a question of a little time. The worst that is likely to happen is that the left leg may be permanently a shade shorter than the right, and it is hoped this may be averted. His Company--all that is left of us--will be very sincerely glad to see him back again. Meantime we rejoice, as I am sure you will, in the manner, the distinction, of his fall, in the certainty of his enjoying the rest he has earned so well, and in the prospect of his recovery.

THE PUSH AND AFTER

The Battalion being now out of the line, the O.C. Company has kindly sent my batman along to me here--you remember my batman, Lawson, on Salisbury Plain--and he is writing this for me, so that I can preserve my present perfect laziness. I point this out by way of accounting for the superior neatness of the handwriting, after my illegible scrawls. Lawson was a clerk at ----'s works before the war, and, as you perceive, has a top-hole "hand of write."

I got rather a fright, as I lay dreaming here, half awake and half asleep, at six o'clock this morning. An orderly came along with a blue ticket and a big safety-pin, like those the Highlanders use in their petticoats, and pinned his label on the bottom of my counterpane.

"Hallo!" says I; "what's this? Are they putting me up for sale?"

Mentally, I began to describe myself for the catalogue. (How strong are the habits of civil life!) "One full-size, extra heavy Temporary Officer and Gentleman; right arm and left leg slightly chipped, the whole a little shop-worn, but otherwise as new. Will be sold absolutely without reserve to make room for new stock." (They have to keep as many beds as possible vacant in Clearing Stations, you know.)

The orderly just grinned and faded away like the Cheshire cat. A Sister came along shortly afterwards, and I asked her the meaning of my blue label.

"Oh! that," she said, very casually, "that's the evacuation card."

I am to be evacuated, like a pulverised trench, a redoubt that has become useless or untenable. Jolly, isn't it? Seriously, I was a good deal worried about this, until I had seen the M.O., because I had an idea that once one was evacuated out of the Divisional area, one was automatically struck off the strength of one's unit, in which case, goodness knows when, if ever, I should see my own "A" Company again. But the M.O. tells me it's all right, so long as one remains in France. One is only struck off on leaving France, and when that happens one can never be sure which Battalion of the Regiment one will return to. So there's nothing to worry about. It's only that these Clearing Stations have to keep plenty of vacant accommodation ready for cases fresh out of the line; and so fellows like me, who are supposed to require a bit more patching up than can be given in two or three days, have to be evacuated to one or other of the base hospitals. Hence the label, which makes of your Temporary Gentleman an "evacuation case."

It's uncertain when I shall be moved, or to which base, so I cannot give you a new address for letters. The generosity, the kindness, the skill, and the unwearying attentiveness and consideration shown one in this place could not possibly be improved on; but their official reticence in the matter of giving one any information regarding one's insignificant self, future movements, and so on, can only be described as godlike. I shall always associate it in my mind with a smile of ineffable benevolence (also rather godlike), as who should say, with inexhaustible patience, "There, there, my little man; there, there." And that's all. Perhaps it's good for us, taken, as medicine must be, with childlike trust and faith. We must hope so.

Come to think of it, there is a hint in the gentle air of this place--never torn by shot or shell, or penetrated by even the faintest odour of defunct Boches in No Man's Land--of a general conspiracy of reticence. It has infected mine own hitherto trusted batman (who presumes to chuckle as he writes these lines at my dictation), whose professed ignorance, regarding most points upon which I have this morning sought information, suggests that I have in the past consistently overrated his intelligence and general competence. It is clearly very desirable that I should get back to my Platoon as soon as possible.

Lying here at mine ease, I think a great deal; but of the quality of my thinking I fear there is little to be said that is favourable. Perhaps the medicine I take so trustfully has contained some of the soporific stuff of dreams, and that is why the pain in my leg has been so trifling since the first day here. I feel my thoughts stirring in my mind; but they move in a swaying, dreamy fashion, as though they were floating in, say golden syrup, and were not really interested in getting out of it. I wanted to tell you all about our push, but, do you know, though it was not very many days ago, it seems already extraordinarily remote, so far as the details are concerned, and I am hazy as to what I have told you and what I have not told.

One thing stands out so clearly in my otherwise treacly mind that I feel I never, never shall forget it; and that is the sensation of the moment when the order reached us to advance. We had been a long time waiting for it, even before our bombardment began, and when it came-- But, although the sensation is very clear to me, I'm not at all sure I can convey any idea of it to you. I've just asked Lawson what he felt like when it came; but the conspiracy of reticence, or something, leads him to say he doesn't know. I found myself muttering something at the moment, and he says he did, too. That's something of a coincidence. He believes the actual words he muttered were: "What ho!" But that's not exactly illuminating, is it?

I believe my thought, as we scrambled over the parapet was that now, at last, we were going to wipe Petticoat Lane off the map as a front line. Good-bye to this hole! That was the idea, I think. We did so hate that bit of line, with its quicksand craters in front, and the sodden lowness that made it a sort of pocket for the receipt of every kind of explosive the Boche liked to lob in on us.

The struggle through the craters, before we got to the first Boche line, was pretty beastly, and, I am afraid, cost us rather dear, although we got to the near lip of the craters before the punishment began, thanks to a quick start and the fine accuracy of our gunners in their curtain fire. You know the sort of thing that happens in nightmares, when each of your feet weighs a ton and a half, at the moment when speed is the only thing to save you from the most hideous kind of spiflication. Getting through the craters was like that.

Our good time began when the craters were passed, and there was nothing but Boche trenches in front of us. Then it was we began to feel the jolly feelings you've read about; the glorious exhilaration of the charge. And, really, it wouldn't be possible to exaggerate about that. You can take it from me that the most highly coloured chromo-lithographs can't overdo that, in the essential spirit of the thing. Their detail is pretty groggy, of course--no waving plumes, gay colours, flashing swords, and polished top-boots, you know. My goodness, no! We were all the colour of the foul clay we'd come from--all over. But the spirit of it! It's perfectly hopeless for me to try to tell you, especially in a letter. They say they pump spirits and drugs into the Boches before they leave their trenches. No drug and no champagne, even of the choicest, could have given us any more exhilaration, I fancy, than one felt in that dash from the craters to the first Boche line. Heavens! but it was the real thing; real, real, real; that's what it was, more than anything else. Made you feel you'd never been really and fully alive till then. Seven-leagued boots, and all that kind of thing, you know. The earth seemed to fly under your feet. I can see the dirty, earth-smeared faces in that Boche trench now. (They were scuffling and scrambling out from the dug-outs, where they'd sheltered from our bombardment, to their fire-steps.) They seemed of no more importance than so many Aunt Sallies or Dutch dolls. Things like that to stop _us_! Absurd!

And how one whooped! I was fairly screaming "'A' Company!" at the very top of my voice as we jumped into that trench. The man on my left was Corporal Slade (Lance-Sergeant, I should say) and, as we reached their parapet I could hear him yelling beside my ear, through all the roar of the guns: "Hell! Give 'em hell! Give 'em hell, boys!" Most outrageous!

In the trench it was a sort of a football scrum glorified; oh! very much glorified. Most curiously, the thing passing through my mind then was "the Peacemaker's" old gag, apropos of the use of his trench dagger, you know: "When you hear that cough, you can pass on to the next Boche. Get him in the right place, and three inches of the steel will do. Don't waste time over any more." Queer wasn't it?

Galloping across the next stretch--by the way, it was the very devil getting out over the Boche parados, so high and shaly. A fellow grabbed my right ankle when I was half-way up; the very thing I'd always dreaded in dreams of the trenches, and, by Gad! if I didn't kick out you must let me know about it. I'd sooner have had a bayonet thrust any day than the ram of my field boot that chap got in his face. The next stretch, to the Boche second line, yes! The champagney feeling was stronger than ever then, because one felt that front line was smashed. Sort of crossing the Rhine, you know. One was on German soil, so to say. My hat, what scores to pay!

And mixed up with the splendid feeling of the charge itself--by long odds the finest feel I ever had in my life--there was a queer, worrying little thought, too. I knew some of our men were dropping, and-- "Damn it, I ought to be doing something to save those chaps." That was the thought. It kind of stung; sort of feeling I ought to have some knowledge I had failed to acquire. They're your men, you ought to know. That sort of feeling. But I don't think it slowed one's stride at all. The champagne feeling was the main thing. I was absolutely certain we were bringing it off all right. The Boche guns were real enough; but their men didn't seem to me to count.

Queer thing about the wire in front of that second line. It wasn't anything like so good or extensive as front-line wire, and I dare say our guns had knocked a good deal of the stuffing out of it. Still, there was a lot left, more than I expected for a second line. Do you know, "A" Company went through it as though it had been paper. It was a glorious thing that. You know how gingerly one approaches barbed wire or anything like that; a thorn hedge, if you like. And you've seen how fellows going into the sea to bathe, at low tide, will gallop through the rows of little wavelets where the water's shallow; feet going high and arms waving, the men themselves whooping for the fun of the thing. That's exactly how our chaps went through that wire. I'll guarantee nobody felt a scratch from it. And yet my breeches and tunic were in ribbons from the waist down when I got to the field ambulance, and from the waist to the knee I'll carry the pattern of that wire for some time to come. Might have been swan's-down for all we knew about it.

And then, unfortunately, on the parapet of the second line I got my little dose, and was laid out. Goodness knows, that shell certainly laid out some Boches as well as me. I'll say this for 'em, they met us on the parapet all right. But "A" Company's business was urgent. We had scores to settle from Petticoat Lane and other choice spots; and the Kaiser's got no one who could stop us. I do wish I could have seen it through. I know they tried hard to counter us out of that line. But they couldn't shift old "A," who did just as well when I dropped out as before--the beggars! Lawson tells me I was yelling like a madman on that parapet for some time before I went to sleep, you know: "I'll be there in a minute!"--there in a minute! How absurd!

Next thing I knew I was being lifted out of a trench stretcher, right away back at Battalion Headquarters in the old support line. Then the good old Batt'n M.O. prodded around me for a bit, and gave me a cigarette, I remember. I remember hearing him say: "Oh! well, _you're_ all right." And then I must have had another doze.

Next thing I remember I was lying in a right-hand lower stretcher in a motor ambulance, and soon after that I was in bed in the Field Ambulance at ----. The same night I came on here, the Field Ambulance being pretty busy and full up. It's only a few miles off. I know there was snow all round when I was being lifted out of the motor ambulance into the hall here.

And then comfort, and cleanliness and quiet; most wonderful peace, and English nursing sisters. My goodness, aren't English nursing sisters lovely? English women, all of 'em, for that matter. And they say there are still some men at home who don't want to join! Seems queer to me.

Well, Lawson is rapidly developing writer's cramp, and I don't wonder at it.

And so I'm to move on somewhere else soon from here. In any case, you understand, don't you, that I'm all right, wanting for nothing, and most kindly looked after. I'll write again very soon, and whatever you do, don't have the smallest feeling of anxiety about your

"_Temporary Gentleman_."

BLIGHTY

This is to be evacuation day. A dozen officers and nearly a hundred other ranks are to leave this place to-day for one or other of the bases. The life of a permanent official in one of these Clearing Stations must be curious, handling as he does a never-ending stream of the flotsam and jetsam of the great war. The war knocks chips off us, and as we are broken we stream in through the hospitable portals of this beautifully organised and managed place; are put in plaster of Paris, so to say, and off we go again to another place to be further doctored; the more newly chipped arriving by one gate, as we go trickling out by another. And this process is continuous. Along the British front alone a score or more of men are bowled over every hour. In a place like this the process is brought home to one.

So, too, is the ordered precision and efficacy of the system of dealing with the wreckage. It is wonderfully methodical and well thought out. And over all, as I told you before, broods the spirit of benevolent reticence, which makes one feel a little like a registered parcel entrusted to a particularly efficient postal service. "When are we going?" Benevolent smile. "Presently; presently." "What base are we going to?" Benevolent smile. "You'll see by and by." "About how long shall we be on the journey?" Benevolent smile. "Oh! you'll be made quite comfortable on the journey. Don't worry about that." "Well, I'm very much better this morning, don't you think?" Benevolent smile. "Do you think I shall be able to sit up in a day or two?" Benevolent smile. "We shall see."

So it is always. I dare say the thirst of patients for information often becomes very trying to the authorities. But they never in any circumstances show any impatience. They never omit the benevolent smile. And they never, never, for one instant, relax the policy of benevolent reticence; never. The man next to me is very keen about his temperature; it is, I believe, the chief symptom of his particular trouble. But the bland familiar smile is all the reply he can ever get to his most crafty efforts to ascertain if it is higher or lower. I haven't the slightest doubt it is all part of a carefully devised policy making for our benefit; but I wouldn't mind betting the man in the next bed sends his temperature up by means of his quite fruitless efforts to ascertain that it has gone down.

* * * * *

_Later._

Here's another strange handwriting for you. The present writer is Lieut. R----, whose left arm has had a lot more shrap. through it than my right got, and who has kindly lent me the services of his right. My left-handed writing is still, as you will have noted, a bit too suggestive of a cryptogram in Chinese. We are lying opposite one another in very comfortable bunks in the Red Cross train, making from ---- to a base, we don't yet know which. There are nearly 500 "evacuation cases" on board this train. Its progress is leisurely, but I believe we are to reach our destination round about breakfast time to-morrow. We found books and magazines in the train when we came on board. That's a kindly thought, isn't it? They bear the stamp of the Camps Library. The doctors and nurses get round among us on the train just as freely as in hospital. The whole thing is a triumph of good management.

While we were lying in our stretchers waiting for the train, having arrived at the station in motor ambulances from the Clearing Station, we saw miles of trains pass laden with every conceivable sort of thing for the French firing line; from troops to tin-tacks; a sort of departmental store on wheels; an unending cinematograph film, which took over an hour to roll past us, and showed no sign of ending then. All the French troops, with their cigarettes and their chocolate, had kindly, jovial greetings for the stretchered rows of our chaps as we lay in our blankets on the platform waiting for our train, especially the jolly, rollicking Zouaves. Good luck, and a pleasant rest; quick recovery, and--as I understand it--return to the making of glory, they wished us, and all with an obviously comradely sincerity and play of facial expression, hands and shoulders, which made nothing of difference of language. And our chaps, much more clumsily, but with equal goodwill, did their level best to respond. I think the spirit of their replies was understood. Yes, I feel sure of that. The war's a devastating business, no doubt; but it has introduced a spirit of comradeship between French and English such as peace could never give.

* * * * *

_Next morning._

You will forgive the left-handedness of the writing, won't you? My friend opposite has had a good deal of pain during the night, and I cannot ask him to write for me now. It was a strange night, and I don't think I'll ever forget it, though there's really nothing to tell; "Nothing to write home about," as the men say. I didn't sleep much, but I had quite a comfortable night, all the same, and plenty to think about. When the train lay still between stations, as it sometimes did, I could hear snatches of talk from different parts of the train itself--doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, railway officials, and so on. Then perhaps another train would rumble along and halt near us, and there would be talk between people of the two trains: French, English, and the queer jumble of a patois that the coming together of the twain in war has evolved. Also, there was the English which remains English, its speaker not having a word of any other tongue, but which yet, on the face of it, somehow, tells one it is addressed to someone who must understand it from its tone or not at all.

"Oh, that's it, is it? Cigarettes? You bet. Here, catch, old chap! Bong, très bong Woodbine. What ho! Same to you, old chap, an' many of 'em. Yes, yes; we'll soon be back again, an' then we'll give the blighters what for, eh? Chocolate, eh? Oh, mercy, mercy! No, no; no more; we got plenty grub; much pang, savvy. You're a brick, you are. You bong, très bong; compree? Hallo! Off again! Well, so long, old sport! Good luck! Bong charnce! See ye 'gain some time! Bong sworr!"

There's a poor chap in the bunk under mine who's been delirious most of the night. He looks such a child. A second lieutenant of the ----s; badly shaken up in a mine explosion, and bombed afterwards. The M.O. says he'll get through all right. He's for Blighty, no doubt. Odd, isn't it? This time to-morrow he may be in England, or mighty near it. England--what an extraordinary long way off it seems to me. There have been some happenings in my life since I was in England; and as for the chap I was before the war, upon my word, I can hardly remember the fellow. Pretty sloppy, wasn't he? Seems to me I must have been a good deal of a slacker; hadn't had much to do with real things then.

We know at last where we're bound for; in fact, we're there. The train has been backing and filling through the streets of the outskirts of Havre for the last half-hour or more. But last evening, when I was writing, we could only ascertain that we were going to ----. Benevolent smiles, you know.

It's frightfully interesting to see the streets. I see them through the little narrow flap at the top of my window that's meant to open. It seems quite odd to see women walking to and fro; and row after row of roofs and windows, all unbroken. No signs of shell-shock here. But on the other side of the train, nearest the harbour, one sees acres and acres of war material; I mean really acres and acres of rations, barbed wire, stores of all kinds.

There's a sort of bustle going on in the train. I think we must be near the end, so I'll put my notebook away.

* * * * *

10.45 A.M.

We are in what they call the Officers' Huts, on some quay or another. It's a miniature hospital or clearing station, built of wood, and very nicely fitted up. Sitting-room at one end, then beds, and then baths and cooking-place and offices; all bright and shining and beautifully clean, with Red Cross nurses, doctors, orderlies, and no end of benevolent smiles. They've taken our temperatures and fixed us up very comfortably, and somebody's started a gramophone, and I've just had a cup of the glutinous, milky stuff I used to hate, you remember. I don't hate such things nowadays; not really, you know; but I pretend I don't care much about 'em for the sake of the virtuous glow it gives to take 'em.

Everyone has asked everyone else where we are going next, and everyone has been given benevolent smiles and subsided into a Camps Library magazine or book. The sitting-up cases are pottering about in the sitting-room, where there are basket chairs and the gramophone. I can see them through the open door. The nurses have fixed jolly little curtains and things about, so that the place looks very homely. I gather it's a sort of rest-house, or waiting-place, where cases can be put, and stay put, till arrangements have been made for their admission into the big hospitals, or wherever they are to go. We have all been separately examined by the Medical Officer. My arm is so much better, I think it must be practically well. I don't know about the leg. I asked the M.O.--an awfully decent chap--to try to arrange things for me so that I should not be cut adrift from my own Battalion, and he said he thought that would be all right.

* * * * *

3.30 P.M.

I'm for Blighty. The M.O. came and sat on my bed just now and told me. He certainly is a decent chap. He said the Medical Board had no hesitation at all about my case, and that I was to cross to England to-night. But he said I need not worry about my Battalion. He was awfully good about it; and he's giving me a letter to a brother of his in London. He thinks I shall be able to get back to my own Battalion all right, and he thinks I shall be ready for duty much quicker by going right through to Blighty than by waiting here. But what do you think of it? Fancy going to Blighty; and to-night, mind you! I'd never dreamt of it. And what about poor old "A" Company? It's a queer feeling. We've all been sorted out now; the goats from the sheep. I suppose it's a case of the worst-chipped crockery for Blighty, and the rest for tinkering here. But I can't help thinking a week, or two, at the outside, will put me right.... Here come Army Forms to be signed.

* * * * *

9.30 P.M.

In bed on board the Red Cross ship. All spotless white enamel and electric light, and spotlessly-aproned nurses, just as in hospital. I've just been dressed for the night; clean bandages and everything comfortable. From the last benevolent smile I elicited I shouldn't be surprised if we weighed anchor round about midnight; but I may be quite wrong. Anyhow, I feel remarkably comfortable. I think there must have been something specially comforting in the medicine I had when my bandages were changed. I shall sleep like a top. I don't think I've quite got the hang yet of the fact that I am actually bound for Blighty. But there it is; I'm on the ship, and I suppose it's on the cards I may see you before this scribble of mine can reach you by post. In which case, it seems rather waste of time writing at all, doesn't it? I think I'll go to sleep. I haven't slept since the night before last. That boy I told you of who was bombed, after being in a mine explosion, is sleeping like an infant in the next cot but one to mine. Nice-looking chap. I'm glad he's sleeping; and I bet somebody will be glad to see him in Blighty to-morrow. To-morrow! Just fancy that!

* * * * *

_Next day._

To-day's the day. When I woke this morning I had glimpses, as the ship rose and fell, of a green shore showing through the portholes on the far side of the deck. That was the Isle of Wight. Had a magnificent sleep all night; only opened my eyes two or three times. We were rather a long time getting in. Then came Medical Officers of the Home Service; and with surprisingly few benevolent smiles--not that they lack benevolence, at all--I learned that I was for London. It hardly seemed worth while to write any more, and I could not get off the ship to send a wire.

Now I am in a Red Cross division of an express train bound for Waterloo. I'll send you a wire from there when I know what hospital I am for. Shan't know that till we reach Waterloo. Meantime--that's Winchester we've just passed. Old England looks just the same. There is a little snow lying on the high ground round Winchester. It looks the same--yes, in a way; and in another way it never will look just the same again to me. Never just the same, I think. It will always mean a jolly lot more to me than it ever did before. Perhaps I'll be able to tell you about that when we meet. I find I can't write it. Queer thing, isn't it, that just seeing these fields from the windows of a train should bring the water to one's eyes? Very queer! One kind of sees it all through a picture of the trenches, you know.

"The Old Peacemaker" didn't tell me, but I know now that nearly half "A" Company are casualties; and there's a good many "gone West." Poor Taffy's gone. Such a clever lad, Taffy. My Platoon won't be quite the same again, will it? Platoon Sergeant, one other Sergeant, two Corporals, and a lot of men gone. We were in front, you see. Oh! I know there's nothing to grieve about, really. Petticoat Lane's behind our front now, thank goodness. That'll save many a good man from "going West" between now and the end of the war.

I'm not grieving, but it makes a difference, just as England is different. Everything must be different now. It can't be the same again, ever, after one's been in the trenches. If Germany wants to boast, she can boast that she's altered the world for us. She certainly has. It can never be the same again. But I think it will be found, by and by, she has altered it in a way she never meant. Of course, I don't know anything much about it; just the little bit in one's own Brigade, you know. But it does seem to me, from the little I've seen, that where Germany meant to break us, she has made us infinitely stronger than we were before. Look at our fellows! Each one is three times the man he was before the war. The words "fighting for England" had next to no meaning for me before August, 1914. But now! that's why these fields look different, why England can never again look the same to me as it did before. I know now that this England is part of me, or I'm part of it. I know the meaning of England, and I swear I never did before. Why, you know, the very earth of it--well, when I think how the Boche has torn and ravaged all before him over there, and then think of our England, of what the Hun would do here, if he got half a chance.... It's as though England were one's mother, and some swine were to----

But it's no good. I can't write about it. I'll try to tell you. But, do you know, it wasn't till I saw these fields that the notion came over me that I'm sort of proud and glad to have these blessed wounds; glad to have been knocked about a bit. I wonder whether you and Mother will be glad, too; I somehow think you will--for your

"_Temporary Gentleman_."

THE END

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_8°. 143 Plates. 15 Small Illustrations_
_$1.75 net. By mail, $1.90_

Captain Bruce Bairnsfather's sketches set all England chuckling, when they first appeared in the _Bystander_, and they have met with as hearty a welcome by Americans who have had the luck to see them. Greatest of all commendation, German prisoners have been known to become hilarious over these indescribable pictures of life in the trenches, and war-fed "Tommys" roar over them. Now, with their amusing captions, they have been gathered into one volume.

These pictures have won in England for the author the title "The man who made the Empire laugh," and caused the _Literary Digest_ to refer to him as "A War Lord of Laughter." They are all war pictures, but calculated to take a deal of the bitterness out of war.

* * * * *

Bullets & Billets

By

Bruce Bairnsfather

Author of "Fragments from France"

_12°. 18 Full-page and 23 Text Illustrations. $1.50 By mail, $1.60_

"'Bill,' 'Bert,' and 'Alf' have turned up again. Captain Bairnsfather has written a book--a rollicking and yet serious book--about himself and them, describing the joys and sorrows of his first six months in the trenches. His writing is like his drawing. It suggests a masculine, reckless, devil-may-care character and a workmanlike soldier. Throughout the book he is as cheerful as a schoolboy in a disagreeable football match."--_London Evening News._

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Other errors are noted below.

- Changed typo on pg. 2: "out" > "our" ("with out regimental
hound pacing in front")
- Removed extraneous comma pg. 23 ("opposite, our Battalion
Headquarters.")

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens were changed to the predominant form if it could be determined, or to the hyphenated form if it could not.

Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, _like this_. Words in bold characters are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=. Underlined text in advertisements not marked up.