Bullets & Billets: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Bullets & Billets, credited to Bruce Bairnsfather, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Bullets & Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather Read in English by DrPGould A front-line view of life in the trenches of the Western Front in the early part of 1914-1915. Told by Lieutenant (later Captain) Bruce Bairnsfather, cartoonist, whose Alf, Bert, and Old Bill were forerunners to Bill Mauldin and his Willie and Joe in World War II. This volume traces Bairnsfather's service as a machine gun officer from its inception until he was removed from the battlefield by the intense shelling during the Second Battle of Ypres (April 1915). It is told with a wry, ironic, grim humor often possessed by those who have endured shells, bullets, floods, mud, bully beef, maconochie, and a surfeit of plum and apple jam. His participation in the unofficial Christmas Truce of 1914 (for which he was investigated in view of a court-martial) is documented as well as the horrors of war at close quarters. (Summary by Dr. P. Gould)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Bullets & Billets
• Author credits: Bruce Bairnsfather
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 32
• Listed recording duration: 4:26:30

Catalogue topics

• humor
• World War I
• cartooning
• christmas truce 1914
• western front 1914-1915

Opening tracks: first 24 of 32

1. 00 - Foreword — 1:09
2. 01 - Ch. 1 Landing at Havre — 10:00
3. 02 - Ch. 2 Tortuous Travelling — 10:42
4. 03 - Ch. 3 Those Plugstreet Trenches — 9:20
5. 04 - Ch. 4 More Mud — 10:28
6. 05 - Ch. 5 My Man Friday — 6:10
7. 06 - Ch. 6 The Transport Farm — 7:42
8. 07 - Ch. 7 A Projected Attack — 7:55
9. 08 - Ch. 8 Christmas Eve — 11:50
10. 09 - Ch. 9 Souvenirs — 5:46
11. 10 - Ch. 10 My Partial Escape from the Mud — 7:26
12. 11 - Ch. 11 Stocktaking — 9:49
13. 12 - Ch. 12 A Brain Wave — 9:38
14. 13 - Ch. 13 Robinson Crusoe — 5:45
15. 14 - Ch. 14 The Amphibians — 7:00
16. 15 - Ch. 15 Arrival of the 'Johnsons' — 7:21
17. 16 - Ch. 16 New Trenches — 6:17
18. 17 - Ch. 17 Wulverghem — 11:21
19. 18 - Ch. 18 The Painter and the Decorator — 8:57
20. 19 - Ch. 19 Visions of Leave — 6:05
21. 20 - Ch. 20 That Leave Train — 11:15
22. 21 - Ch. 21 Back from Leave — 8:54
23. 22 - Ch. 22 A Daylight Stalk — 6:03
24. 23 - Ch. 23 Our Moated Farm — 8:38

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.