Captain Bruce Bairnsfather (British)

Bairnsfather was born in 1887. He was a prominent British humorist and cartoonist. His best known character was "Old Bill". Old Bill and his pals Bert and Alf were featured in Bairnsfather's "Fragments from France" cartoons published weekly in the magazine The Bystander, during the Great War. He was born in Murree, in British India (now Pakistan). His father was a major in the Indian Staff Corps. He was brought to England in 1895, and entered the United Services College, Westward Ho!. He failed the entrance examinations for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and also Woolwich. He then enlisted in the Cheshire Regiment. He resigned in 1907 and began a career as an artist. IN 1914 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He served on the Western Front with a Machine Gun Company, but suffered shell-shock and also hearing damage. He was then posted to H.Q. 34th Division on Salisbury Plain. AS a result of his cartoons of Old Bill appearing in The Bystander, he became very popular with the troops, to the extent that the War Office asked him to draw similar cartoons for other Allied Armies. Old Bill continued to be very popular throughout the Inter-War Years, even appearing in film. However, when World War 2 came, he was ignored by the British, but he was instead appointed as the official cartoonist to the U.S. Forces in Europe. He died in 1959 at Worcester aged 72.

RCC5934 Bullets & Billets (Bairnsfather)

RCC6754 Fragments From France, Vol IV (Bairnsfather)

RCC8197 From Mud to Mufti. With Old Bill on all Fronts (Bairnsfather)