The Best of Fragments from France

A collection of British cartoons featuring Old Bill, "one of the best-loved characters of World War I," created by a solider on the front lines (
Warfare History Network).
Bruce Bairnsfather was the most famous cartoonist of the First World War and his soldier characters Old Bill, Bert and Alf, faced with sardonic good humor everything that the Germans, the mud and their officers could throw at them. However, Bruce (known by some as The Man Who Won the War) never received the acclaim that he deserved for the morale boost that his cartoons gave to the troops at the front and to the people back at home. The 50th Anniversary of Bairnsfather's death on 29 September 2009 offered an opportunity to redress the balance, and acknowledging it in combination with raising funds for Help for Heroes (H4H) seemed to be most appropriate.
The cartoons reproduced in this collection were originally drawn for
The Bystander, a popular weekly magazine, in which they appeared each Tuesday throughout most of the Great War. Their effect on the public was totally unexpected, and so dramatic that
Bystander sales soared. The organization, with unerring good judgement, decided it had a winner in Bairnsfather, and published the first 43 of his cartoons in an anthology. It was produced in February 1916, given the name
Fragments from France and sold for 1s.
The success of the
Fragments magazines was such that edition followed edition in rapid succession and at least eleven editions were published. Leafing through these pages, the reader will soon understand their tremendous popularity and success which have withstood the test of time.