Pipers and Pipe Music of the Great War

Pipers and pipe music of the great war.

The piper playing his comrades into action is an iconic image of war through the ages. More than 2,500 pipers took part in the First World War. Of those, 500 were killed and 600 wounded. Their role was to entertain the troops in their brief leisure hours, lift their spirits and their feet on the long marches, inspire the men into battle and lament the fallen. Many new tunes were composed as pipers played their way across battlefields from France to the Middle East.

The book bring to life the role of a First World War piper through real life stories - one Pipe Major described his pride in playing as his comrades marched in column past the commanding officer; another described trench warfare as "No life for a Pipe Major, living like a rat in a hole"; and another told of the long desert march to Jerusalem with burning heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night.