Tales from Grandfather Hamish

I was reminded today of a story that my old Grandfather Hamish used to tell me when I was a boy, it concerned his old Captain when he was a humble infantry soldier during the First War; a Captain Wellbeloved. He always used to tell this story whenever the Edinburgh Tattoo was on the telly, saying that “Captain Wellbeloved new what he was bloody talking about” and “why don’t you turn this rubbish off Mother!” I have rendered the story here as closely to my Granddad’s own words as I can recall them.

“Captain Wellbeloved was an Officer, anything but a Gentleman and a madman as you might say. We were scrapping furiously in the trenches during a particularly hairy attack, we had just pelted across no-mans land with machine gun rounds whistling, humming and buzzing above our heads to storm the forward German trench.

As the Captain removed a bayonet from a squirming kraut’s gut he lifted his head, gave a puzzled frown and exclaimed “What’s that bloody racket?” To a man everyone including the hapless Gerry cocked an ear, and soon drifting with the smoke of battle across the fifty yards of mud that we had just temporarily claimed for George V came the sound of bagpipes. In the middle distance there stood a lone piper kitted out in the overstated magnificence of full highland fig, silhouetted against the dawn sky. The black fur of his bearskin rippled in the wind, his kilt flapped gently about his knees. The piper stood there immobile like a massive three horned beast, the sound of the pipes swirling with the mist that had begun to descend eerily upon us. For a brief moment the sheer omnipotence of the music along with the pumping adrenalin threatened to overwhelm me as I choked back a tear.

“What’s he playing?” said Wellbeloved.

“I think it’s ‘The Soldier’s Lament’ Sir”, ventured a voice cracked with emotion.

Well I’ll give the c**t something to lament about; making a f*cking din when decent people are trying to slaughter each other peacefully!" And with this he snatched a rifle from Corporal Clap, checked the breach, drew a bead on the piper and squeezed off a single shot.

The noise of the pipes died slowly like the whistle of a kettle removed from the fire. Those of us in the trench, covered as we were in mud, guts and blood were appalled, as one man we stared open mouthed in horror as the day stood still and time appeared to stop as if the bullet had somehow mangled the very clockwork of the ever expanding universe as well as the poor piper. Then gradually the swirling mist cleared and we saw the white faced piper scrambling down the bank back into our trench clutching his wounded pipes. “Got ‘em in the bladder!” yelled Wellbeloved triumphantly, “never could stand the f*cking pipes; just an excuse to p*ss decent music loving folk off in my opinion, bloody Kings, Generals and politicians like the f*cking noise they make, must remind ‘em of shagging the house cat or whatever they did at f*cking public bloody school!” And with that he went back to the job of bayoneting Germans.

We never did find out who the piper was, where he came from or what he hoped to achieve by playing “The Soldier’s Lament” whilst we all fought desperately for twenty five hundred square yards of Belgian mud. However, I suspect that if the piper had showed his bladder again within aiming distance of Captain Wellbeloved that his sporran would have developed a serious leak.”

At this my Grandfather would always issue a little chuckle and then deliver his final word on the subject. "And that is why I have never, ever had the inclination to take up the bagpipes."