"You were scared, but you just had to do it, they were depending on you. I played my company over the bloody top, right into the German trenches. It was stupid as hell…Men falling all around me, falling dead…it was bloody horrible. I just played whatever came into my head, but I was worried about tripping on the uneven ground, which interrupted my playing. The enemy fire was murderous, the men were falling all around me. I was lucky to survive. Hearing the pipes gave the troops courage. We stood in full view of the German lines, marching through no-man’s land without any sort of ammunition, no cutting devices when we encountered barbed wire. We received an extra penny a day to play our pipes." - Harry Lunan, 5th Gordon Highlanders, Somme, France, July 14, 1916.
In WW1, out 2500 bagpipers, 600 were wounded and 500 were killed while rallying the troops into battle. #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #ww1 #balls