SKIRLING IN THE FIRING LINE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 242, 1 July 1918, Page 10

SKIRLING IN THE FIRING LINE

THE GLAMOUR OF TUB BAGPIPES PLAYING ON THE CHARGE f.i pipe-uinjor of tho Royal Scots led this battalion forward to an old Scottish tune, and during the attack stood out alone in No Man's Land, playing until he fell wounded. ]

The censor draws his pen through all news deemed likely to help tho enemy, but.from time to time he lete pass 6toriee of gallantry, or generosity to friend or foe,' which shine ns clear lights on the dark waters of war's brutality. Among them, nut this least glorious aro of the pipers of the Scottish battalions, telling of brave deeds carried through with n steadfast and'quiet courage. In a far-off time nt Inveiiochy one of tho great piping family of MacCrinnnon composed a pibroch in the midst of battle, and to nis music John of tho Isles routed the forces of the King. Nearly four centuries later, marching in the night to Quatro Bras, the Black Watch played that same pibroch of hnrd-won victory. The iiext link in this chain of war tradition and contrast comes from France, 1915, The story is told by a chaplain, and it is well to let him speak in his own clear, fine words. As At Waterloo. "About the middle of June a draft of about a hundred and twenty men arrived in camp for the Gordons—the finest draft the commanding officer declared he had ever seen. On the 13th they were ordered to the front. I found they had a piper with them, and immediately laid hold on him to play the men down to the station. 1 brought him up to my tent and provided him with a set of pipes which I had reserved for my own particular tunes. I very soon discovered that 1 had stumbled upon no ordinary performer. But I found something more interesting than .that. His great-grand-father had been a piper in the regiment in.the days of the Napoleonic war, and at tho Battle of Waterloo he stood within the square and played tho ancient Highland challenge march 'Cogadh neo Sitli,' as the French cuirassiers hurled themselves upon the immovable ranks in vain.

" 'John,' I said, 'this is the nnr.tversar.v of Waterloo, and you will lend (he wen out to that very time which vonr great-grandfather played on (hat great day.. 1 told the colonel, and his eyes ■fflenniMl ns he snid to me, 'Ah! we'll do belter than (lint. You will tell the men about it, and I will call them to attention, ami your piper will play.his lime in memory of the men of Waterloo. . And .so it wus done, and n thrilling incident it was as the men stood ripicl and silent in full marching order, and uie piper strode proudly along thn ranks sounding the wild, defiant challenge that stirred tlio regiment a hundred years lielore. Playing a Tank Into Battle. Here; is, however, the climax of this quaintly connected-sc.ile, in the personal account of a man who served on a tunic, We had our firs! run with the Gordon Highlanders, and it was men of that but(ihoii who christened us first ilio-'Hi-fi-land Lnddie' and the 'Gay Gordons' I lie day h'o set out on our first I'ritztnglilemng jaunt there was a lot of fu-w luadP. The pipers played us right up ■to the point whore we got our first bap-

A Scottish chaplain writes that when the Army machine ran at first over time heriMvere no pipers.-, and, of course, no bands with the .British troops in France Hie men carried on tlimu S li the winter ol liiu la without mnsii., guye ~-i,a t ,| lev themselves could supply from mouth-orgnn.-rnnd trumps. J.'inalty he wrote home to a friend, asking him to send, i , ') i ?''n hy c,vok > " set of Pip""- At lust, he (ells wiih a quiet pleasure, they' arrived, and the chaplain found somewhere a piper. We are not told of the secret practising am! preparation, nor of he delight oi tins Scotsman, who, with us follows in a "fur country," j ms ] it . lie to rmnul |,i ln of LoI J' h ™ c j'nds that which will content their hearts niV'il"* "'"K cllHplain '""1 -Pipe? tot in tho long line appear the brand bonnets and the glancing bodies of Ms >'«(. When (hey are nearly abrea "'•'l ix iriye.l, tl,e piper sl.pJYnd filfc 5 ■feTikeVr illto^«c n til Hh' u 1 ' lp F of Icos . "'to "U i(?« <r n l l iW cr eyes - And neve

In the Battle Line. But this is far bock from the firing e. turther- north and east the at lleepeus, and here is found the P per also, or he upholds to-day, as I ~i°!.' the %, tradition for cooing and bravery which is his heritage. This is the piper's honour. He is the only musician to enter the firing line. And tf'M and hiffh the pipes ifavo sounded • i<7 l y , ot ° ,nn "" er loss than even that ■,f'.i i rl m 25, 1015. at the battle ot Loos, the new British armies were brou;;!it to tho trial and i?-!i ™ not . walllin B- I" the region of -Hill 70, wnere the King's Own Scottish Borderers held tho line, we had'released gas in preparation for. an attack, and through the storm of. the enemy's shells ami. small-arm lire the regiment awaited in suspense the shrill whistle vhieh woirdd send (hem over (ho parapet. I hen at the moment of crisis, when nerves were strung high with excitement and the crash of the bombardment tho wind changed, and, like an embodied calamity, the clouds of gas swept back on the Borderers. Yet now, when the ixinio [of combat drew jieur to each man's heart, they achieved (Humph. Lieutenant Young, seeing Piper Laidlaw with his pipes, cried to him, "For Gud's sake pipe them together, Laidlaw!" "With an absolute disregard for danger," says the official report. "Laidluw stepped over the parapet'.". Amid tho bursting shells, Hying bullets, and the peril of the back-sweeping »as wreaths, he 'Riled his bag, and, marching before the trench, played, "All the Blue Bonnets are over the Border." It needed but (his: Lieutenant Youiiig, followed by his men, leaped from the trench, and, with Laidlii'v playiiiß at their hNid, charged over the i\'o Man's Land. The fire thinned and broke their line, but the remainder swept on with the high piping <vei- leading them. An explosion drove n piece of barbed wire into Laidliiw's foot, but he kept on J hen a shell burst; near, killed Lieutenant loiiii(| and struck Laidlaw uncoilscions,- while Hie charge swept on alone He was carried back (o the hospital, and while there he received the Empire's highest recognition • for gallant action, the V.C., "For Valour."

Tho Lou-land regiments have vindicated well (he protest thai, be they ever so gallant, they are praised as Highlanders or not at all. Piper f,aidlaw, of Hie King's Own Scottish Borderers, won tho V.C.; Pipe-Major Anderson, of tho Ist Edinburgh Battalion Royal Stols, chose-i from t.lio whole of his division, has been awarded the Croix do Guerre. "I did not like to think of the boys going into action without the pipes, so 1 offered (o lend them out," said Anderson, in hospital, on July 1, I'llli. His regiment was going out to ill lack on the Somme, and when the wliis/lo blew and they leaped , from (he trench ho led (hem forward with a "battlefield march." Over that desolation of desolations, No .Mini's Liiml, 'midst (he winged and crashing doiilli they went on, with piping before them. Andersen, to his own vast astonishment, remained untouched, and within charging distance of Ihu German .'ine broke into tho regiment's march, "Dumbarton's Drums." This was tho beginning of the work. Tho first lino was reached, and, wilh Andersen playing on the pnrapot, tho Jtoyal Scots cleared it with bayonet and Ijomb. Playing with fire of battle, the very breath and being of the pipes, ho led them oviir the second and over the third line. Then, before hn couild reach Iho fourth ho wns struck in tho side. Hβ would doubtless fain have eulfored a woumt in both feet, like

l'indlater, of Djirgni, if, like him, lie might have, sitting, played the troops to victory. As it was lie waved his pipes above his head and cheered to I™ advancing past and beyond him. nhilo waiting there ho lec'eived jet. another wound, in tin leg, and lay all that day in the midst of the Gorman preliminary bombardment. To crown his trouble, when lie was brought in. ho lost his pipes. "And," hq said, "they were grand pipes." They were, indeed, pipes to cherish, for they had been in strange and icerie places, and had cone with Scott to the .Antarctic to elieep the months-long night and wake new echoes from the fields of ice. In France, however, they have found no mean restingplace. "A Little Piper Chap." Another piper, nameless in the sinclo account I find of him, except as the "little piper chap," was rejected fourteen times as unfit for "service." according to the official interpretation of the word. In the end he was accepted as a piper, and went at last to Trance with the Black Watch. Finally the day of attack came. A wrecked village was to bo taken, and the regiments, Seaforths and the Watch, poured in among its bullet-spitting ruins. "Fn the midst of the uproar," the teller of the tale suddenly heard the sound of the pipes. Up and down the street with the fallen houses on either side, and through the flame-hearted smoke clouds strode tho Litllb Piper. "When ho played 'Macgregor's Gathering' wo charged ono fortress five times over without pause." Through the explosions of bombs and the spirts of rifle snd machine-gun lire he kepi tho proud neighing of ins piping unbroken, and over the battleechoed tho old traditional challenge of the hills. At last, however, they aaw him stagger in his gait, but though wounded in. his side he played unfalteringly still. An explosion or the sweep of a machinfrgun carried away a leg and struck him broken to tho earth. Yet fate did not breulc the whole of hiin. Propped against a building he refilled his pipes and sounded again the music of battle. In the end the village was cleared, and the Highlanders held the ruins in victory. Then the piper's .music changed. The flying taunting notes ceased, and there arose from the indomitable player the proud,' eiern, heart-gripping lament for the fallen. "The Land o' tho Leal," the sorrow of ancient and broken peoples, wailed for the fallen of the Dark Soliers, but it was scarcely played ere the Little Piper let fall his pipes and joined again those others, his friends among the leal. In Rest Billets. Behind the lines the pipes have also place. On the weary roads bnck from the trenches, wtom the troops return worn from watching, and the strain of danger, the promllv ringing chanters lend them ro .heir billets of rest. After the Buttle of Ypres in May, 1915, w luu\ the Canadian Scottish returned sorely buttered from their first and bitterest ordeal, they were met and played liiick ry the pipers of the Ist Gordons as nn escort of Jionour "o their overseas brothers who had blocked the rodd to Calais. Canadians will not soon forget this act of chivalry. ,

But march and quickstep on the road and in battle and the l>l iHun , tunes in camp and billet are not the only airs the piper plays. When the long grave i is dug behind the Hues, the men who ; have said f«rcw»ll for ever to the kind I hearlns of hom« aro laid to rest to tho .slow sob of thft lament. "The Flowers of the Vims', " are indeed "a' weid awa'" in many a hamlet, and as the lament (rails aft or the conflict for, those who ! shnll rcl urn lo Lochaher no more I here are many sore hearts at home. The pibroch has indeed "sounded from John o' Oronls lo Isle of Skye," and from Kdinlmrgli lo Glasgow, too. Not Flodden itself wrought such havoc among Hip strong youth of Highlands and Lowlauds, and the glory that bangs about Ihe deeds of the brave lads who fell dim's before (lie sorrow round the ingle npuks over the whole of Scotland.—Hun- , tly Gordon in tlie "Weekly Scotsman."