What began in 2008 as a response to an American blog post by Mike Lynch Cartoons led, in 2009, to a remarkable project with the ECC. That was when I discovered that a certain Captain Bruce Bairnsfather had drawn his very first wartime cartoon in 1914, barely thirty kilometres from my doorstep. It marked the humble beginning of an impressive career that would make him world‑famous in the United Kingdom and far beyond, thanks to his iconic character Old Bill.
Curious and slightly excited, I drove to Ploegsteert, where a commemorative plaque refers to that very first cartoon. Not long afterwards, we came into contact with Major Tonie Holt and his charming wife Valmai, who wished to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Bairnsfather’s death in 2009.
We clicked immediately. At the In Flanders Fields Museum, we developed the idea of including tribute cartoons by contemporary British and Belgian cartoonists in the planned reissue of Fragments From France. Each artist created their own variation on Bairnsfather’s famous cartoon “The Better ’Ole”. The project received a fitting finale: a charity auction at the Cartoon Museum in London, and a cartoon exhibition in Ploegsteert where the works were displayed.
So when you—perhaps prompted by the In Flanders Fields classic From Middelkerke to Wevelgem—hear about the Plugstreets or the Christmas Truce, take a moment to think of the remarkable story behind this book. You can still admire it at the ECC.
Jan Oplinus