Bruce Bairnsfather: a photograph The Birth of "Fragments": Scribbles on the farmhouse walls That Astronomical Annoyance, the Star Shell "Plugstreet Wood" A Hopeless Dawn The usual line in Billeting Farms "Chuck us the biscuits, Bill. The fire wants mendin'" "Shut that blinkin' door. There's a 'ell of a draught in 'ere" A Memory of Christmas, 1914 The Sentry A Messines Memory: "'Ow about shiftin' a bit further down the road, Fred?" "Old soldiers never die" Photograph of the Author. St. Yvon, Christmas Day, 1914 Off "in" again "Poor old Maggie! She seems to be 'avin' it dreadful wet at 'ome!" The Tin-opener "They're devils to snipe, ain't they, Bill?" Old Bill FOREWORD _Down South, in the Valley of the Somme, far from the spots recorded in this book, I began to write this story._ _In billets it was. I strolled across the old farmyard and into the wood beyond. Sitting by a gurgling little stream, I began, with the aid of a notebook and a pencil, to record the joys and sorrows of my first six months in France._ _I do not claim any unique quality for these experiences. Many thousands have had the same. I have merely, by request, made a record of my times out there, in the way that they appeared to me_. BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER. CHAPTER I LANDING AT HAVRE--TORTONI'S--FOLLOW THE TRAM LINES--ORDERS FOR THE FRONT [Illustration: G] Gliding up the Seine, on a transport crammed to the lid with troops, in the still, cold hours of a November morning, was my debut into the war. It was about 6 a.m. when our boat silently slipped along past the great wooden sheds, posts and complications of Havre Harbour. I had spent most of the twelve-hour trip down somewhere in the depths of the ship, dealing out rations to the hundred men that I had brought with me from Plymouth. This sounds a comparatively simple process, but not a bit of it. To begin with, the ship was filled with troops to bursting point, and the mere matter of proceeding from one deck to another was about as difficult as trying to get round to see a friend at the other side of the ground at a Crystal Palace Cup final. I stood in a queue of Gordons, Seaforths, Worcesters, etc., slowly moving up one, until, finally arriving at the companion (nearly said staircase), I tobogganed down into the hold, and spent what was left of the night dealing out those rations. Having finished at last, I came to the surface again, and now, as the transport glided along through the dirty waters of the river, and as I gazed at the motley collection of Frenchmen on the various wharves, and saw a variety of soldiery, and a host of other warlike "props," I felt acutely that now I was _in_ the war at last--the real thing! For some time I had been rehearsing in England; but that was over now, and here I was--in the common or garden vernacular--"in the soup."