"À chlanna nan gaidheal! À chlanna nan, Gaidheal!
Guillain ri Guillain a chèile!"[29]
[THE MUSIC OF BATTLE]
By Philip Gibbs
Through all the days and the years in which I served as a war-correspondent on the Western Front, it was seldom that I did not hear, from near by or from afar, the music of the pipes. It was a sound which belonged to the great orchestra of life in the war zone, rising above the deep rumble of distant guns, travelling ahead of marching columns up the long roads to Arras or Bapaume, wailing across the shell craters of that desert which stretched for miles over the battlefields of Flanders, and coming to one's ears like elfin music through the dead woods above the Somme. Before every big battle the skirl of the pipes went with the traffic of war and guns surging forward to the fighting-lines. For in every big battle there were Scottish troops and their pipers played them on to the fields of honour, and played them out again when their ranks had been thinned by heroic sacrifice. This music had an inspiring influence not only on the Scottish troops themselves, whose spirits rose to the sound of it when, after long marching, their feet were leaden on the hard roads and their shoulders ached to the burden of their packs, but also on English troops who were in their neighbourhood, and on their way to the same battlegrounds. For though an Englishman cannot, as a rule, distinguish one tune from another—does not indeed believe that the pipes play any tune—there is something in the rhythm, in the long drawn notes, in the soul singing out of those "wind-bags," so he calls them, which in some queer magic way, stirs the blood of a man, whoever he may be, and stiffens the slackening fibre of his heart, and takes him out of the rut of his earth to some higher plane of thought, and gives him courage. It is an Englishman who writes this, but I am sure of it, for many times in dark days of war I have been taken up by the sadness and the gladness of the pipes, borne by the breeze across the fields of war.
The 15th (Scottish) Division were special friends of mine, and I remember, years ago now, how I saw them marching through Bethune on their way to the battle of Loos, where they fought their first big fight in September of '15. Through the Grand-Place of Bethune, not yet wrecked by shell-fire, they came marching with their guns. Snow was falling on the steel helmets of the men and clinging to the long hair of their goat-skin coats. It was a grim scene, and away beyond the city of Bethune there was the ceaseless thunder of bombardment over the enemy lines. But above this noise, like a heavy sea breaking against rocks, rose the music of the Scottish pipers playing their men forward. One pipe band stood in the Square, and its waves of stirring sound clashed against the gabled houses, and I remember how all our English gunners, riding with their heads bent against the storm, turned in their saddles to look at the pipers as they passed and seemed warmed a little by the spirit of that Scottish march.
The 15th Division went into battle with their pipers, while the Londoners of the 47th had to be content with mouth-organs and sing "Who's your lady friend?" on the way to Loos through storms of shell-fire. The 10th Gordons were the first into the village of Loos, and some of them went away to the Cité St. Auguste—and never came back. It was an unlucky battle and cost us dearly, but it proved the immense valour of our men, who were wonderful. The pipers played under fire and some of them were badly wounded, but there were enough left to play again when the Scots were relieved and came out, all muddy and bloody, with bandaged heads and arms, to small villages like Mazingarbe and Heuchin, where I saw Sir John French, then Commander-in-Chief, riding about on a white horse, and bending over his saddle to speak to small groups of Jocks, thanking them for their gallant deeds.
In the early battles of the Somme there were many Scottish battalions of the 3rd and 9th and 15th Divisions, fighting up by Longueval and Bazentin and Delville Wood, where they suffered heavy losses under the frightful fire of German guns. The South African Scottish were but a thin heroic remnant when they staggered out of the infernal fire of "Devil's Wood," and the men of the 15th Division who captured Longueval left many of their comrades behind. That was one of the finest exploits of the war, and they were led forward by their pipers, who went with them into the thick of the battle. It was to the tune of "The Campbells are Coming" that the Argyll and Sutherlands went forward, and that music which I had once heard up the slopes of Stirling Castle when the King was there, was heard now with terror by the German soldiers. The pipers screamed out the Charge, the most awful music to be heard by men who have the Highlanders against them, and with fixed bayonets and hand grenades they stormed the German trenches, where there were many machine-gun emplacements, and dug-outs so strong that no shell could smash them. There was long and bloody fighting, and in Longueval village, across which the Highlanders dug a trench, the enemy put down a barrage, yard by yard, so that it was churned up by heavy shells. On that day of July 20, 1916, I met the Scots marching out of that place. They came across broken fields where old wire lay tangled and old trenches cut up the ground, and there was the roar of gun-fire about us. Some of our batteries were firing with terrific shocks of sound which made mule teams plunge and tremble, and struck sharply across the thunder of masses of guns firing along the whole line of battle. At the time there was a thick summer haze about, and on the ridges were the black vapours of shell bursts, and all the air was heavy with smoke. It was out of this that the Highlanders came marching. They brought their music with them, and the pipes of war were playing a Scottish love-song: