trembling with funk and holding out pictures of their Fraus and
kids, and calling out 'Don't shoot, Kamarade! Don't shoot!' and my
men wanted to shoot them. The Perthshires had been out for blood
since the 9th of May when the Huns had burnt their wounded comrades,
shooting them with petrol bullets so that their clothes burst into
flame and they died in agony, and men who couldn't stick the sight
of it any longer crept out of their trenches, in spite of orders, to
drag them in and were burnt alive too. That day my company swore that
they would take no more Prussian prisoners, and now word had been
passed round by the Brigade, 'The 15th Prussians are in front of you,
who burnt the men of your regiment. You will know how to behave.' My
men wanted to shoot them all down, make the place a shambles; but,
of course, I wouldn't have it. I told them they had to take the men
prisoners."
"Did they obey you?" I asked.
The Nestling looked at me in surprise as if I were a very ignorant
person.
"Obey! They knew very well that the first man who fired I'd blow out
his brains with my revolver."
After all, the Chicken's assurance was a compliment to the regiment,
where discipline is an elemental fact. And it spoke well for the
boy too, that he realized what admission into that Kingdom, or
corporation, meant,--all self and chickenhood being merged in the
subaltern of the Perthshires, whose powers were as natural and
inalienable as the properties of carbon or oxygen.
Yet this callow youth on whom authority sat so lightly spurned his
profession. It appeared that he had ambitions. He scoffed at the idea
of sticking in the army after the war. He wanted "to do something,"
he said. I could not understand how he could resist the glamour of
it all. His Colonel thought well of him and he knew it. The O.C., a
reserved man, and sparing of praise, had been talking to me about the
Chicken before dinner; he told me that the boy had the right spirit
and no fear in him. "I sent him on a patrol," he said, "a day or two
after he arrived at the front, to a building between the lines which
was supposed to be occupied by Germans. My orders were, 'Find out if
the house is held. Find out for yourself, remember, and don't take
your men's word for it. They'll always see Germans, especially on a
wet night when they want to be snug in the trenches.'"
The Subaltern had the sight of an owl, but he was determined not to
come back until he had seen Germans. So far he had seen none, having
arrived at the trenches straight from Winchester, where he held a
commission in the O.T.C. and had just won a scholarship for New
College. He swore he would see Germans that night or promenade the
empty house between the lines.
A slip of a moon showed above the clouds and the rain ceased when
they were within fifty yards of the building. The Corporal touched
the Subaltern's sleeve and said, "They're there, Sir. I can see about
a dozen of them."
"Where? I don't see."
"Straight ahead, Sir, by the wall."
The Chicken approached nearer. Within forty--thirty yards. The
Corporal warned him again in a throaty whisper:--"There's 'arf a
company, Sir, lining the side of the house. We're almost agin them."
Still the Chicken could not see. He gave the order to move forward.
At fifteen yards the Germans opened fire. A quick volley. The patrol
threw themselves flat. Luckily they were concealed in a slight
depression, and in a few seconds the moon went under a dark cloud.
The Subaltern whispered the order to return the enemy's fire, and his
four men blazed away into the shadow under the house. The Germans
replied vigorously; by a miracle none of the little party were hit.
Then the Huns turned the machine gun on to them from somewhere
farther back. The Subaltern heard the spray of bullets coming nearer,
spattering the earth, searching every inch of soil, passing with a
thirsty sucking noise overhead. He was the most exposed of his party,
but he felt for the body of the dead man he had stumbled against, and
drew it into a close embrace. The current of lead passed an inch over
them where they lay interlaced, the live man clinging for life to the
dead. The fire dropped. The body received a bullet and shook as if it
were wrestling with him. Its head butted his own. A faint smell of
cigar fume clung to its moustache. The boy had let the situation go
for a moment, and was wondering, with a detachment at which he was
surprised, whether all Germans smoked Havanas in the trenches, when a
new kind of explosion added to the din. It was "A" Company's patrol
bombing the house. The little scouting party received their first
casualty from them. The man behind the Chicken uttered a cry of pain.
A splinter from a bomb had taken away part of his right ear.
This extended attack was too much for the Huns, who thought the whole
line was advancing and decamped. The moon peeped out again as they
were going off, and the Subaltern, Corporal and the two men accounted
for at least half a dozen of them. These dark figures which rolled up
like rabbits were the first Germans the Chicken had seen.
The Subaltern entered the house with the two privates and sent the
Corporal back to tell the Colonel that we were in possession. He had
taken a rather important Observation Post marked 2.22 on the map.
I had some of the story from the boy and some from the Colonel, but I
will let the boy finish it.
"The next day we had some burying," he said. "From the new post
we could send out patrols to bring in our fellows who had been
knocked out on the 12th. You won't mind me talking about things
which make you feel a bit squeamish, will you, Sir?"--the boy called
everybody above the age of forty "Sir"--"Tell me to shut up if it
is too beastly; but, you see, most of these bodies had been out
for six weeks and were more or less decomposed. We dug a shallow
trench towards them, threw out a hook on a bit of rope and drew
them in. We had to find their identification discs. It was not a
pleasant business taking off a man's shirt and not always easy, and
my Corporal being sick every minute didn't help things either. I
generally went for their pockets for letters; that was easier, but
..." I omit here some details which are too unpleasant to print. "The
Corporal with his weak stomach was a bit of a nuisance, especially at
night, for if the Germans heard him they would send up a flare."
Then he told me about a frontal attack at Loos. The Chicken had seen
and suffered more and lived more in six months in France, and done
more for England than I had in two score odd years. He was clearly a
born soldier. He was happy in the regiment and quite one of them--one
of the new incarnation at least who approximate in some ways to the
old. I could not see what more he desired.
"You really think of throwing up the army after the war?" I asked.
The Chicken turned on me the wistful smile that talk of "after the
war" evoked among the sanguine at the time. "In war time of course
everybody has got to be a soldier," he said, "but in peace time--no
thank you!"
"But what are you going to do?"
"Anything, but inspect meat and tunic buttons. Something that counts.
I suppose I shall go into the Bar or Parliament."
I would have asked him if he really thought these talking shops
counted more than the Perthshires; but the pipes were coming in again
and they were playing the regimental slogan. It gave one the most
extraordinary feeling in the pit of one's stomach and all down one's
back.
"I'm not sure, though," the boy said ingenuously when they had gone
out, "I may stick to the regiment on the chance of another show."
I understood, I had passed through the two moods myself in a long
route march when the pipes took over charge from the brass band.
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.
LTD.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _The Bagpipe_. Grattan Flood.
[2] Probably the first pipers to play on French soil were those
of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on their landing at
Boulogne.
[3] _Echoes of Flanders._ C. L. Warr.
[4] Philip Gibbs.
[5] "We will take the high road."
[6] _The Adventures of a Despatch Rider._ Major W. H. Watson.
[7] _More Adventures in Kilt and Khaki._ Thomas Lyon.
[8] Stephen Graham.--_The Times_, 16th January, 1919.
[9] Philip Gibbs.
[10] "The battle beyond Baghdad--'A Highland Officer.'"--_Blackwood's
Magazine._
[11] Stephen Graham.--"A Private in the Guards."
[12] _With the Gordons at Ypres._--Rev. A. M. Maclean, C.M.G.
[13] Lieut.-Col. Cyrus Peck, V.C., D.S.O.
[14] _Musical Memoirs of Scotland_, 1849, p. 9.
[15] Sir John was wrong in his date: this incident happened in 1816.
[16] The names of the tunes are largely written in rather badly spelt
Gaelic, including in some cases the letter 'v,' _e.g._, Vuirlin
instead of A Bhirlinn, and h is the commonest consonant in the
vocables--neither 'v' nor 'h' alone being used in correct Gaelic.
[17] Since this was written I have discovered this line in staff
notation in an old MS. by Donald Macdonald, son of the man who
published the Collection of Piobaireachd in the early nineteenth
century.
[18] The commas are thrown about haphazard in this tune.
[19] Something is omitted here--probably 'a.'
[20] It is not easy to see what 'ved[(are]' means here: comparing
it with same point in First, Second and Third Motions, it should
probably be 'dari' instead of ved[(are] or 'vedari' perhaps. As
written in D. Macdonald, Jr's. MS. it would be 'dari.'
[21] 'h' is probably inserted here to show that C and not B is meant.
[22] Perhaps this cadence is a clerical error.
[23] Probably a clerical error for hadarem.
[24] "The pipers' hollow."
[25] Keeper of family records, genealogist.
[26] "The anger of winking Patrick."
[27] "The blind man's leap."
[28] "The Broom of Peril," the banner borne by Oscar in battle.
[29] "Sons of the Gael shoulder to shoulder."
[30] All the atrocities mentioned above are not fiction but fact. Day
and date, names and places can be given for all of them.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
A superscript is denoted by ^{x}.
In the pipe music notation an accent over a group of letters xyz is
denoted by [(xyz]; for example end[(are], and hodr[(od]in.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
The one hundred and twenty table headers in the 'REGIMENTAL RECORDS'
section have been made identical; a small number in the original text
omitted the column header 'REG. NO.'
Footnote [20] is correctly referenced twice from pg 189.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example,
unrhythmical; outwith; bagpipe, bag-pipe; dugout, dug-out.
Pg ix, 'The Cameron Highlanders' replaced by 'The Queen's Own Cameron
Highlanders'.
Pg 5, 'invididuals' replaced by 'individuals'.
Pg 7, 'Ch till mi' replaced by 'Cha till me'.
Pg 11, 'sons of Erc' replaced by 'sons of Ere'.
Pg 19, 'unfavourably' replaced by 'unfavourable'.
Pg 52, 'dipersed' replaced by 'dispersed'.
Pg 65, 'sporans' replaced by 'sporrans'.
Pg 73, 'REG. NO. NAME. RANK.' replaced by 'REG. NO. RANK. NAME.'.
Pg 102, '23/121/7' replaced by '23/12/17'.
Pg 124, '24/10/141' replaced by '24/10/14'.
Pg 130, 'Piper Major' replaced by 'Pipe Major'.
Pg 166, 'June, 1615' replaced by 'June, 1915'.
Pg 183, 'himbandrc' replaced by 'himbandre'.
Pg 183, 'hobandrc' replaced by 'hobandre'.
Pg 200, 'Higlanders' replaced by 'Highlanders'.
Pg 202, 'The musi' replaced by 'The music'.
Pg 222, 'Higland' replaced by 'Highland'.
Pg 229, 'shapnel' replaced by 'shrapnel'.
Pg 236, 'Nifinsky' replaced by 'Nijinsky'.
Pg 248, 'Bretannach' replaced by 'Brettanach'.
Pg 262, 'boys haled' replaced by 'boys hauled'.
Pg 282, 'unrythmical' replaced by 'unrhythmical'.
Pg 287, 'shell-hope' replaced by 'shell-hole'.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Pipes of War, by Sir Bruce Seton and John Grant