I lo'e nae laddie but ane,
An' he lo'es nae lassie but me.
Their kilts were caked with mud, and stained with mud and filth, but the men were splendid, marching briskly with a fine pride in their eyes. Officers and men of other regiments watched them pass, as men who had fought grandly, so that the dirtiest of them there and the humblest of these Jocks was a fine gentlemen and worthy of Knighthood.
Many of them wore German helmets and grinned beneath them. One brawny young Scot had the cap of a German staff officer cocked over his ear. One machine-gun section brought down two German machine-guns besides their own. They were dog-tired, but they held their heads up, and the pipers who had been with them blew out their bags bravely, though hard-up for wind, and the Scottish love-song rang out across the fields—whatever its words, it was, I think, a love-song for the dear dead they had left behind them.
During the battle of Arras in April of 1917 there was always a wonderful pageant of men in that old city which had been under fire since October in the first year of war and was badly wounded, with many of its ancient houses utterly destroyed, but still a city with streets through which men could march, and buildings in which they could find comfortable, but unsafe billets. It was the headquarters of the battle which lasted in the fields outside by Monchy Hill and by Fampoux and Roeux, Wancourt and Havinel until the end of May. Arras is a city built above deep tunnels and vaults made in the Middle Ages when the stone was quarried out of them to build the houses, and lengthened and strengthened by our own engineers and tunnellers, so that our men could live in them under the heaviest shell-fire, and march through them to the German lines. Above, in the old squares and streets, in houses still standing between gulfs of ruin, several of our Divisional generals and some of our battalion commanders established their headquarters, and when the first fierce shelling eased off—though it never ceased until the last German retreat in the autumn of 1918—the streets were always filled with a surging traffic of men and mules and guns and motor lorries. Many Scottish battalions of the 15th and 51st Divisions among others were quartered here, and on one historic day there were assembled no less than five pipe bands in full strength, who played up and down one of the Squares amidst crowds of fighting men of English and Scottish regiments. I remember one such day when the pipers of the 8/10th Gordons, commanded then by Colonel Thom, were playing in the square. The Colonel had a proud light in his eyes as the tune, "Highland Laddie," swelled up to the gables and filled the open frontages of the gutted houses. Snowflakes fell lightly on the steel hats of the Scots standing in a hollow square, and mud was splashed to the khaki aprons over their kilts as they smiled at the fine swagger of the pipe-major and the thump of the drum-sticks; an old woman danced a jig to the pipes, holding her skirt above her skinny legs. She tripped up to a group of Scottish officers and spoke quick shrill words to them. "What does the old witch say?" asked a laughing Gordon. She had something particular to say. In 1870 she had heard the pipes in Arras. They were played by prisoners from South Germany, and as a young girl she had danced to them. It seemed to me a link between two strange chapters of history in the city of Arras which had been crowded with the ghosts of history since those days when Julius Caesar had his camp outside its walls on the very ground—at Etrun—where our Scottish troops had their huts.
The pipes of Scotland sounded in many villages of France and Flanders, where for all time the wail of them will come down the wind to the ears of men who hear with the spirit. They were played not only in the roads and fields, but often at night in farmhouses where Highland officers had their messes, or in cottages where some battalion headquarters were established or in old houses within city walls where there was a feast or a guest night. It was my privilege to spend some of those evenings, when down the long table in a narrow room the pipers marched, solemnly standing behind the guest's chair and playing old dances and marches of Bonnie Scotland. Then the colonel would offer the pipe-major a glass of whisky, which he would raise high, toasting the health of the officers in Gaelic. After that, on many a good evening in a bad war, the tables would be cleared, and the young officers would dance an eightsome reel, with laughter and simulated passion, and shrill cries of challenge and triumph which stirred a stranger's soul. Or the pipers themselves would be asked to give a dance, and in stocking feet on bare boards, dance as lightly as gossamer and as nimbly as Nijinsky the Russian, though big, brawny men. In small rooms the music of the pipes was loud—too loud for any but Scottish ears—and it was hard on a French "padre" who was trying to sleep upstairs in one small cottage, with thin walls and cracks between old timbers of the ceiling, while downstairs late into the night the pipers played merrily for those who would fight in the next battle, near at hand. The effect of such pipe-music within four walls was prodigious on a French officer whom I took one night to the mess of the 8/10th Gordons. The full pipe-band marched in as usual, and I saw my friend open his eyes wide and stare with amazement at this apparition. When they stood behind his chair playing lustily, so that the very glasses quaked on the table, he became very pale, and after the second "strathspey" I saw him collapse in his chair in a dead swoon. The Gordons thought this a fine tribute to their pipers. They enjoyed the incident justly though full of consideration for the French officer. He explained to me after the symptoms that overcame him. "I felt," he said, "enormous waves rolling up to me and passing over me; my heart beat wildly, and vivid colours rushed past my eyes. Then I knew no more!" Nothing would induce him to suffer such musical agony again.
I shall always remember one piper I saw in the ruins of the Château of Caulaincourt. How he came there, or why he stayed there, I do not know, because few of our troops were in the neighbourhood, and the place was a desert. The château had been a vast place, with high walls and terraces and out-houses, but the whole place had been hurled into ruin by the Germans on their first retreat in the spring of 1917. They had opened the family vaults and pillaged the coffins, and I remember being struck by the pathos of a little marble tablet I saw on a refuse heap, to which it had been flung. On it were the words in French, "The heart of Madame la Marquise de Caulaincourt." Poor dead heart of Madame la Marquise! In life it would have broken at the sight of all this ruin. But there, quite alone, on the central avalanche of stones, stood a Scottish piper playing a lament.... I heard from other officers that he was seen there later, still alone, and still playing his pipes, but why we could not tell.
The last time I heard the pipes was at the end of the war. They were playing Scottish troops over a bridge across the Rhine, at Cologne, and at the journeys' end of all that long and tragic way through which our men had fought with heroism, through frightful fire, with dreadful losses, until victory was theirs, final and complete. Along those roads the pipes of war went playing, month after month, year after year, from one battle to another, and in their music for ever, as long as remembrance of this war lasts, there will be the tears and the tragedy and the triumph, reminding the world of all that gallant youth of Scotland which fought in France.