Pipers of the Trenches

Fort George,

headquarters of the Black Watch,

the Third Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Halt.

The day begins, as it always does, to the sound of the bagpipes.

HE PLAYS

For 300 years - in peace and in war -

the pipes have punctuated the lives of Scottish soldiers.

Tunes of glory,

of inspiration

and of remembrance.

Today, the Army piper has a role rich in history and pageantry.

But 100 years ago

the Army piper had a role simply beyond belief.

In the Great War, pipers would rise, unarmed, from the trenches.

In defiance of machine guns and shells,

in defiance of any notion of self-preservation,

they would stand straight

and play their comrades into battle.

More than 2,500 pipers served.

Almost half were killed or wounded.

Men from Scottish battalions raised all across Britain and her Empire.

Men of inconceivable bravery.

The pipers of the trenches.

The seaside town of Blyth,

15 miles north of Newcastle.

I haven't seen these since I was tiny.

Katy Hall and her grandfather, John Wilson, have family ties

dating back to the Great War Pipers of the Tyneside Scottish Regiment.

It's amazing to think that they were the pipes

that your dad played during the war.

HE SIGHS

A bit stiff? Pop that bit there.

Katy's great-grandfather, also called John Wilson, played these

very pipes onto the battlefield on the first day of the Somme -

the bloodiest single day in British military history.

My grandad's father was a Pipe Major

and his father was a Pipe Major,

obviously during the war.

And my grandad's father's brothers

were also Pipe Majors, as well.

-That's the mouthpiece.

-The mouthpiece.

That's the chanter.

'It was just kind of one of those family things to do.

'It was important to them. You know, it was a big part of their lives.'

Three of Katy's ancestors played at the Somme,

and Katy's become fascinated with their individual stories.

When I was...probably about 12,

I noticed a briefcase at my grandad's house, my grandparents',

and it was just full of old things.

'I was fascinated. It was old photographs,

'old documents, old newspaper articles.'

And there's your grandad again.

-So it is.

-He's definitely playing the pipes on that one, isn't he?

SHE LAUGHS

'You feel like you know them,

'even though they were there way beyond your years.'

Katy has studied her family history for years,

but one ambition remains.

'I would love to visit France,

'visit the battlefield where everything took place.'

For somebody to be able to show me what the pipers actually did there.

'Knowing my ancestors were there,

'you know, just to get an idea of what went on.'

From the beginning of the war in July 1914

to its end in November 1918,

over five million men served in the British Army.

Hundreds of battalions...

..of which around one in seven belonged to the Scottish tradition.

Some with kilts,

but all with pipers.

They are there to perform the traditional role of the piper

in the Scottish regiment -

playing on the march

and playing duty tunes during the day,

but, ultimately, there is the idea that, in battle,

they will play to encourage the men forward.

As a new piper in a new Army battalion, you were entering

a well-established tradition.

On the one hand, you would look back

to the well-known musicians and composers,

because there is a very strong tradition of that

in the Scottish regiments, as well,

but also looking back to the traditions of playing in battle

and being wounded in battle.

Which is not something new -

it's not something that starts happening in the First World War -

this goes back...

The famous ones would be Piper Clarke at Vimiera in 1808

in the Peninsular War against the French - the wounded piper plays on.

In 1898, the north-west frontier of India,

the Heights of Darghai - which is a famous pipe tune, as well -

Piper Findlater of the Gordon Highlanders,

wounded, carries on playing.

It's something that everyone would have known about.

The new Scottish regiments first came to the battlefields

of France in the spring and summer of 1915.

Their first major battle took place in the flat farmland

surrounding the little mining town of Loos.

There are huge numbers of Scots.

This is the particular thing about the Battle of Loos.

You had two Scottish divisions in the assault on the first day,

but also Scottish battalions throughout all the other divisions.

So the estimate is there's something like 30,000 Scotsmen

on the field of battle at Loos.

And from that battlefield would emerge a truly legendary figure.

A Scottish military icon -

the Piper of Loos.

Kevin Laidlaw's great-grandfather, Piper Daniel Laidlaw,

was perhaps the most famous Scottish soldier of the First World War...

..and Kevin's come back to the National Museum of Scotland

to renew his acquaintance

with his great-grandfather's most prized possession.

His Victoria Cross -

Britain's highest military honour.

One of two Victoria Cross awards to pipers during the First World War.

Only two, and the other one was to a Canadian.

That one's in Canada, so when you and your family decided that you

wanted to donate the medals to the National Collection, that was a...

I think the expression would be we bit your hand off!

The story of how Piper Laidlaw won his medal ranks among the most

celebrated stories of Scottish military history.

It begins on the morning of the 25th of September, 1915,

with the first ever use of poison gas by the British Army.

The gas was released from cylinders for about 20 minutes, half an hour.

But the critical thing here was that the weather changed

so the gas, instead of going out to the battlefield, it was actually

coming back into the trenches and gassing the Allied soldiers.

In those days, as you can imagine, they'd have very primitive gas masks.

And also, you can imagine, nobody wanted to go over the top,

so the line didn't move.

Kevin's great-grandfather appeared as himself in the 1928 film

The Guns Of Loos, recreating the events of that day.

Lt Young shouted, "For God's sake, Laidlaw, do something!"

So he struck up his pipes,

went over the top playing Blue Bonnets Are Over The Border,

the regimental march of the King's Own Scottish Borderers,

the battalion he was attached to,

and it was only then that the line started to move

and the men went over the top.

He played until he was shot in the legs

and actually managed to get back to the trench.

The men actually captured Loos that day

and made some significant advances.

With men falling all around us in the trenches...

In a filmed interview from 1934, Piper Laidlaw gave his own account

of the day to military historian Sir John Hammerton.

It gives me a thrill to find you've brought

the famous Pipes of Loos with you, Laidlaw.

Never go anywhere without them, sir.

I played them over the top and went right on through the first line

of German trenches, on to the second line, where I was bowled over.

Will you play us the tune with which you piped the boys over the top?

Yes, sir.

HE PLAYS: "A' The Blue Bonnets Are Over The Border"

Laidlaw's tune,

A' The Blue Bonnets Are Over The Border,

was written in the 18th century to celebrate the Jacobite Uprising.

But, after Loos, this tune of ancient rebellion would be

forever associated with one man's act of bravery.

'Every time I play it, you know, I just think of Piper Laidlaw

'and the exploits and all the men that went over the top that day'

and coming to the museum today and seeing the medals, again,

just kind of brings that all back

and it does make me feel quite proud to have a relative

who was awarded the Victoria Cross in such a Scottish way, if you like.

Here's a piper doing what pipers are supposed to do -

lead the men into battle.

But also it's an insight into the horrors that was World War I

so it makes you really think about that as well.

Laidlaw was one of around 200 pipers who played at the Battle of Loos.

And, of that 200, around 50 were killed.

There were many, many acts of gallantry

and Piper Laidlaw's courage is not in question here,

but I think it was symbolic. I think, you know, there were

numbers of pipers killed,

but I think that the idea of the wounded piper

playing on, having that resonance in the Scottish tradition,

that's what made it something that people latched onto.

Even more than other Victoria Cross winners,

he became a symbol of something.

And the British were not alone in using the powerful image

of the unarmed piper storming into battle.

Here's something else from 1915.

This is a German commemorative medal.

It's a very, very different image.

This is a Scottish piper as the figure of death.

You can see the death's head, the skull there.

You see different versions of this motif of the dance of death,

but it is interesting that, in 1915, one of the images

that the artist here chooses is a Scottish piper

and I think that's got something to do with the German awareness

of the Scottish presence at Loos

and the casualties that had been inflicted.

In the Summer of 1916, a year after Loos, the Allies again

attempted to break the stalemate in northern France...

..with the biggest British military operation of this or any other war -

the Battle of the Somme.

On the first day of the Somme,

the 1st of July, 1916,

20,000 British soldiers lost their lives.

And in the epicentre of the battle, around the village of La Boisselle,

the men of the Tyneside Scottish and Tyneside Irish

were piped towards the German guns.

Among the pipers were three of Katy Hall's ancestors.

And, for Katy, this is her first visit to the battlefield.

I really don't know what to expect, to be honest!

As I said, it's something that you kind of read about in books

or you watch movies about.

But it's not something that you

generally have an opportunity to experience.

You know, it's not going to be until I actually stand there

and see it for myself that I will know.

Katy's great-grandfather, his father and his uncle

all played the pipes into battle on these French fields.

You're standing right in the middle of the Somme battlefield here.

-The battlefield itself was 25 miles long.

-Really?

And you had almost three quarters of a million men waiting to attack

on the 1st of July.

It was the biggest battle that's ever been fought

in British military history,

and you're pretty well on the front lines here,

where your great-uncle and great-grandfather would have served.

The Tyneside Scottish attacked across this valley

and the one on the far side of La Boisselle.

Behind them, you had the Tyneside Irish,

who attacked over the tops of these hills.

But, of course, when they appeared over the top of the hill, the Irish,

they became silhouetted against the sky - perfect targets.

-The German front line is where those houses were.

-Right.

So that's the distance they had to cross here,

at walking pace,

in the sunshine,

under machine-gun fire and artillery fire.

It... It's... You can't even imagine,

I can't even imagine what it would have been like.

Well, I've spent my entire life studying this

-and I can't imagine it.

-No.

I couldn't even imagine one second of being here,

having to get out of a trench, even if you are exhorted by pipers.

My great-grandad, he went from one end to the other,

completely unscathed,

but his uncle was shot several times, pretty much immediately.

So I can't get to grips with the fact that they were both

there at the same time, yet one of them was completely unharmed

and the other one wasn't.

And obviously they would have been both at the front.

They would have been standing in a trench, a very deep trench,

waiting for the whistle to blow.

We don't know when the pipes would have started

but they would have started probably before the attack

in order to...to get the blood charged, really,

because these men had to go and do things

-which doesn't come easily to a human being.

-Definitely not, no.

They had to kill in any way possible,

to terrorise those men into submission.

PIPES ECHO

For the Germans, as they got closer,

the pipers were as important as knocking over an officer.

If you take out the officers, you take out the command sequence.

If you take out the piper, you take out something else,

something spiritual almost.

-They would have become a target, as well.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-It's difficult to overestimate the importance of the pipers.

-Yeah.

To kindle that collective spirit, the regimental spirit.

And that's what the... That's...

After the Brigadier had said all his speech,

it was up to the...

It was the sound of the pipes.

And as long as that piper could be heard

amongst the crashes and explosions,

still piping across no man's land, that pulled people forward.

Tremendous power in that sound.

On that first day of the Somme,

the noise was quite literally deafening.

1,500 British artillery pieces fired a quarter of a million shells.

Underground explosions

could be heard in England.

There are no known audio recordings of the Great War

so could the latest technology,

combined with meticulous research, build an accurate audio picture

to discover how the bagpipes might have sounded

against the backdrop of Britain's biggest ever battle?

EXPLOSIONS

Sounds a little bright

so we can just take some of the high frequencies out of that,

which will give us a distinct impression of...

First World War historian Michael Stedman has come to

the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art.

SHELLS WHISTLE, EXPLOSION

I'm just wondering whether or not in the sort of...you know,

-the first part of this...

-Yeah?

-..we could actually have

-the sounds of artillery even...

-Sooner.

-..sooner.

'Well, the principle thing that every historian is concerned with'

is making sure that we're talking about veracity and accuracy.

This is what we want.

So I've referred to a number of sources,

principally, the battalion war diary, or intelligence summary.

I've also referred to the official histories.

EXPLOSION

'Primary sources, principally, or eyewitness accounts,

'written and compiled by people who were there.'

Michael has studied all the weaponry deployed at the Somme,

when exactly it was used, and how exactly it sounded.

-I think we're talking about a Stokes mortar bomb.

-OK.

-And they produced a rather sort of bass, flat...

-Thudding sound.

-Yes.

THUDDING EXPLOSIONS

-A bit more drawn-out than that.

-OK.

'I have a mental image'

of what I'm going to hear

but, at the moment, I'm just desperately looking forward

to hearing what this is going to sound like.

-After you, Michael.

-Thanks very much, Paul.

EXPLOSIONS, GUNFIRE, SHOUTING

'Forward!'

SHOUTING, GUNFIRE

LOUD EXPLOSION

'Run for your bloody life and kill them!'

RECORDING FADES OUT

HE SIGHS

I mean, that actually...hurts.

It is just...

It's painfully real.

Paul had placed the sound of a lone piper in the mix.

But amidst the hellish cacophony of the first day of the Somme,

it was almost impossible to hear.

Throughout this, the pipes appear.

I'll play you the pipes in this section now

and you can tell me if you hear the pipes,

now that you're aware that they are there.

It should be about five seconds or so before these pipes come in.

LOUD RUMBLE OF EXPLOSIONS, GUNFIRE

WHIZZ OF SHELLS

You can't hear.

-But they are there.

-EXPLOSIONS CUT OFF, PIPES PLAY

I'm just soloing the track,

which is quite close and quite loud.

EXPLOSIONS, GUNFIRE DROWN OUT PIPES

At its height, the intensity and scale of the battle

would have obscured the sound of the pipes.

Shells, huge shells, landing close by.

Machine gun fire.

The bullets hitting metal objects, shredding people, shredding wood.

The pipes become indiscernible.

On that first day of the Somme,

soldiers might well have lost contact with the sound of the pipes

but what remained was the sight of the piper,

walking forward, unarmed,

into the hell of battle.

EXPLOSIONS, GUNFIRE, SHOUTING

'Forward!'

SOUNDS OF WAR FADE OUT

That was horrible.

SHE SIGHS

That was awful.

It's the legacy of all this which these men have got to cope with.

Even those who were not wounded, like your great-grandad,

who got through the war unwounded -

what was he carrying with him for the rest of his life?

What visions did he see every single day of his life

as a result of this one day?

-It's horrible.

-Mm.

-That's awful.

Three of Katy's ancestors played at the Somme.

Two survived.

Her great-uncle, Garnet Wolsley Fyfe,

was killed on the first day.

"Lance Corporal Garnet Wolsley, 23rd Tyneside Scottish Battalion,

"Northumberland Fusiliers, 1st of July, 1916, aged 36..."

Born in Edinburgh, the youngest of ten children,

Garnet's family had moved to the Northeast of England

soon after the death of his father.

And, like his father, Garnet became a miner

and, in 1906, he married a local girl, Rachel Burrows.

They had one child, a boy - Ronald.

Katy has long collected his letters and photographs,

but this is her first visit to Garnet's grave.

I just knew that he was a miner,

married, had a child,

and was a piper.

It's nice to be able to see it, instead of just a photograph.

It's lovely.

Having photographs and documents

and knowing where those people lived and what they did,

and knowing that they never went back to it,

you know, knowing that they had a normal life,

with children and family, to never go home to that...

..it's sad.

Four battalions of the Tyneside Scottish had gone into battle...

..with 26 pipers, of whom 20 were killed or wounded...

..pipes in hand.

And when the guns fell silent,

pipers would write tunes in honour of their fallen comrades.

PIPES PLAY: "The Battle Of The Somme"

The Battle Of The Somme was one such tune.

Perhaps the greatest pipe tune of the war,

composed by a lowly-born Highland quarryman,

Pipe Major Willie Lawrie.

HE PLAYS: "The Battle Of The Somme"

Lovely tune.

Willie Lawrie, his music has a very distinctive stamp

and it may be that

that's because he came from

the Gaelic community of Ballachulish on the West Coast that it has that

link back into the musicality of Gaelic song.

PIPES PLAY

It is really the instrument of

celebration in the clan chief's hall and so forth,

or in the villages in the countryside.

I don't think the outside world is perhaps conscious of

how special that relationship between the bagpipe and the Highlands is.

The Highland pipers of the Great War,

men like Willie Lawrie,

were a connection to what had been left behind.

To home, to family,

and to better times.

HE PLAYS UP-TEMPO SONG

Griogair Lawrie is a descendant of Willie Lawrie

and a student of his life and work.

'He was very aware of his position in the Army

'as someone who was able to give'

the guys - who must have been very, very low in spirit

and missing home so much - a wee bit of heart

and a wee bit of home while they were away.

And there were other boys here, from Ballachulish, with him.

I think they really all stuck together

and he and his music were a big part of that.

Lawrie spent a year in the trenches...

..in action at Ypres and Festubert.

He died in November 1916.

Killed, not by bullets or bombs,

but by an infection.

A victim of the squalor and filth of the Great War.

It was a very sad thing for everybody in the village, and beyond.

He was recognised nationally as a treasure, musically, you know.

If he'd gone on to live until old age,

think about the music he could have produced.

MUEZZIN CALLS

In what was the first WORLD war,

pipers played far beyond the trenches of northern France.

Glasgow drama teacher Richie McColm has come to Western Turkey

with Stuart Allan of the National Museum of Scotland.

Richie hopes to uncover the story of his great-grandfather,

Piper Kenneth McLennan,

an almost forgotten ancestor.

He was up in the north of Scotland

and he moved to Clydebank,

to work for Singer, I think. That's all I really know.

I do know that he plays the bagpipes or he piped.

And I know that he piped in the war.

Military service records reveal that McLennan

enlisted in the Highland Light Infantry in the May of 1914.

He was then 29 years old and gave his occupation as labourer.

A year later, he left Glasgow and his wife, Lizzie, behind,

and boarded a troopship

headed for Gallipoli.

The opportunity to go over to Gallipoli

to find out what happened over there

would help me to really connect with the story

and perhaps connect with my family history.

On the 5th of July, 1915,

Richie's great-grandfather landed on this very beach.

I think this is the remains of a monitor,

a small boat that's part of the ferrying of men and supplies.

McLennan's regiment, the 7th Highland Light Infantry,

had come to reinforce the main British landings.

All part of an ambitious, and perilous,

Allied plan to establish a sea route to Russia.

-They came in at night.

-At night-time?

Yeah, cos it wasn't safe on the beach.

I mean, the landings had taken place here in April

but the beaches were still a very dangerous place to be.

The front line wasn't terribly far away.

You know, and these guys had never been in action before.

They're right into it cos as soon as you're on the beach

you're in danger of shellfire.

Piper McLennan and the men of the Highland Light Infantry

moved inland, a mile north of the beach.

The conditions they found here, at the British rest camp,

were squalid and diseased.

I mean, you see the ground here, it's very hard to dig in this soil.

There would be thousands of men here,

sleeping in kind of scraped-out holes,

and if they were lucky they had a waterproof cover over the top.

And if you think about the sanitation and everything,

that number of people in one place that you had to deal with.

And flies.

All the accounts of people's experiences in Gallipoli,

they talk about this plague of flies.

So you've got dysentery and enteric fever. It's kind of constant.

What would a piper's role be here?

The piper is going through what everyone else is going through.

Music in the rest camp, I guess, was an option,

and the pipes might have played at certain times of day,

but, like the rest of them, he was essentially waiting to do his job,

cos his job was up there.

The vineyard is where? The vineyard...

-Yeah, this way.

-Back that way.

Working with specialist guide Izzet Yildirm,

Stuart and Richie are attempting to find the Allied front line.

Richie doesn't yet know that his great-grandfather,

Piper McLennan, would emerge from a battle in these Turkish fields

as a decorated military hero.

So this is...12th of July now,

so he's been here for a couple of weeks.

And this is the brigade going into the front for the second time.

And what happened?

Well, the objectives that they had been set

was to capture three lines of Turkish trenches,

-which are just over there, where we walked.

-Uh-huh.

The problem was that the third trench didn't actually exist.

It was a mistake. There was something there

but it wasn't a properly dug-out trench.

They went forward in waves and the first wave,

which your great-grandfather would have been in,

was detailed to capture the third trench.

So the whistles blow and everyone gets up out of their trench

and your great-grandfather, as a piper, starts to play

and plays the charge and they move forward in that direction there,

into machine-gun fire.

And...a lot of people were killed early on.

It's a very confused picture

but they got across the two lines of trenches

-and then they kept going for this third trench...

-That didn't exist.

-..which didn't really exist.

-Right.

So when they got to, basically, a succession of shell holes

they tried to hold it but they couldn't.

He kept playing the charge, people, I guess, falling, dying all around him.

And he kept playing the charge until, effectively,

-I think a shrapnel burst blew the tops off his bagpipes.

-Right.

So, when he could play no more, he then reverted roles and started

evacuating the wounded and bringing them back here to the British line.

-For that...

-So he just kept on going back and forward with...

And bringing in the wounded.

This was noticed in all the melee that was going on

so afterwards he was recommended for a gallantry decoration,

which he got. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal

for playing until he was able to play no longer and then,

exposed to enemy fire, bringing his wounded comrades back.

-So he did pretty well.

-He DID do pretty well.

That's pretty impressive. I didn't... I didn't know that at all.

About half of the 7th HLI,

about 500, were killed or wounded

but the other half made it through

and your great-grandfather was one of them.

And the only...

It's quite depressing. I was reading about exactly what happened here

and there's not a lot positive to draw from it,

but the one kind of positive thing is actually the kind of resilience

-and, I guess, the courage of the guys who...who had to do it.

-Yeah.

That's the one thing that comes out that you can take something from.

There's not much else.

I think, see, after being told that, it's almost like I've got this

sort of heroic...silhouetted figure.

I just can't imagine the idea of...

..everybody else is running about with guns

and this guy's standing in the middle of a field

wi' a set of bagpipes.

I'm sure he was one of many young men who fought for their country,

who bravely looked after and saved other people around him

and took them back to the trenches to offer support and help, you know,

so he's one of many

but I feel really proud to be a part of that one person.

Six months after Kenneth McLennan piped his men into battle,

the Allied forces withdrew.

The Gallipoli campaign had been a total failure.

In less than a year of fighting and disease,

half a million men,

both Turkish and Allied, were killed or wounded.

MAN READS IN TURKISH

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey,

had led the defence of Gallipoli.

In poignant reconciliation, he wrote...

"You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries,

"wipe away your tears.

"Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.

"After having lost their lives on this land,

"they have become our sons, as well."

Some people there were 16 years old.

You know, some of the people who fought here

are the same age as the people I teach.

And, back home in Scotland, on Glasgow Green,

Richie has found a memorial

to the men of the 7th Highland Light Infantry

and to the great-grandfather he's only just come to know.

Coming back and talking to my pupils about it or talking to

my colleagues about it and actually telling about it,

some people actually felt quite, sort of, proud themselves

and emotional at me speaking to them about what was going on,

so it made me think a lot more about my history

and a lot more about my family's history.

To be able to stand in the position that my great-grandfather

was fighting, it's been a phenomenal experience.

A century after McLennan's heroics at Gallipoli,

the British Army continues to train its young soldiers

in the art of piping.

These volunteers have come from regiments near and far

to the Army School of Pipes and Drums, just south of Edinburgh.

Today, at the passing out parade, they become pipers.

Part of a living military tradition.

PIPES PLAY A MARCH

They follow in the footsteps

of men like Laidlaw, Fyfe, Lawrie and McLennan.

In today's wars, these soldiers may never leap from the trenches

and play their pipes into battle...

..but the Army retains its steadfast faith that the sound

of the pipes can inspire soldiers into great and heroic achievements.

So what would happen if science tested that faith?

That's good. We're going to...

Dr Harry Witchel of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School

has devised a unique experiment

to find out if hearing the pipes could inspire soldiers

to even greater feats of bravery and strength.

Today's experiment, we're going to be looking at the effects of different

kinds of sounds on your ability to perform under various circumstances.

So it's going to be slight fatigue on your strength.

We're going to play you different kinds of sounds,

or music, as the case may be.

You'll be listening to something for about five minutes on the treadmill

and then, at the end of the treadmill, we're going to ask you

to test your strength on this object here.

This is a hand dynamometer and it measures actual physical strength.

12 Scottish volunteers

from the Glasgow and Strathclyde University Officer Training Corps

will each carry out the same test, three times,

with three different soundtracks played in random order.

Bagpipe music...

..modern music, chosen to be at the same pitch and depth as the pipes...

..and, as a control,

the sound of silence.

Essentially, we're looking at,

when pipers were in the battlefield

and there were all these men who were exhausted,

what was it about the pipes music that could drive them on?

Could pipes music drive them on?

'And we'll see if this kind of motivation can make a genuine

'objective difference to how much strength

'they can manage after being partially exhausted.'

66.1. OK.

Clinical trials have suggested

that music can produce a marked physiological effect.

Probably the most famous of those concerns the effect of music

on patients who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders.

If you give them music, they report lower levels of distress and pain

'but they also show higher levels of work output.'

That's very good.

But here, what we're looking for is a much more territorial effect.

That is, will music, just because it's Scottish music,

'and motivational music, have an effect?'

That's 34.2. Yeah. Bigger.

The next day, and Dr Witchel has analysed

the results of his experiment.

What we found was that the bagpipe music

caused grip strength to be stronger than the alternative music,

and that was statistically significant.

Overall, Dr Witchel's study showed

that the effect of the bagpipe music was inconsistent,

but it was certainly noticeable.

It supports the idea that,

if these young people felt a sense of identity,

felt a sense of social territory toward bagpipe music -

it made them feel like Scots -

it fits with the idea that this gave them extra strength

so that, after this fatiguing exercise, that they found

greater strength to do physical performance in a situation

where they wouldn't necessarily have other found that strength.

It gave them psychological reserve and resolve.

PIPES PLAY: "The Atholl Highlanders"

But in terms of the structural components of bagpipe music,

you've got two things going on.

One is this high-pitched sound, the melody that gets you up.

And if you identified with it,

it would be strengthening rather than frightening.

The other thing is this drone,

and the drone of the bagpipes is driving.

It allows people to keep finding the strength to move forward.

This drone is one of the most important things about

what makes bagpipe music unmistakable

and you can imagine it being strengthening for the fighters

in a war and terrifying for those who they are fighting against.

The raw power of the piper came at a considerable cost.

At least 25 pipers killed at Gallipoli.

About 50 at both Loos and the Somme.

The Scottish Army piper

had come to life in a time of swords and muskets.

But, by the end of the Somme, by late 1916,

pipers had spent over two years

engaged in a very modern, mechanised war.

The game has changed.

There is anecdotal evidence that they were protected,

they were not always placed

in the trenches,

except under the conditions of a major attack.

Kept further back,

because it's the problem of replacing them.

It would be a battalion commander's decision as to where

he would want his pipers to be.

Some were more protective of them than others.

Pipers would live or die according to the attitudes

and philosophies of their commanding officers.

Even as the war drew to its end,

some battalions continued to place their pipers in the line of fire.

Not least the foreign Scots.

Scottish-styled regiments were raised on every continent,

all proud of their history and lineage.

Today, here in Vancouver, and all around the world,

the Army piper remains a potent symbol

of the bonds of clan and empire.

The pipes that I have were my grandfather's.

Alexander Newlands.

He got them issued to them in the First World War,

in 1914, as a member of the 48th Highlanders.

He was a Pipe Major. He was at Vimy and Ypres,

the Battle of the Somme. Any of the major battles

that were occurring wherever the 15th were stationed

or deployed during that time, that's where they would have ended up.

THEY PLAY: "Scotland The Brave"

Garth is himself a Pipe Major

of the local Cedar Hills Caledonian Pipe Band.

And he still plays the pipes his grandfather took to war.

My grandpa played them.

They have been in the family for 100 years now.

Go ahead and try the bottom hand scale again.

'I can see my progression carrying on with them

'and I'm instilling in my son the need to take up it, as well.'

-Good job, Austin.

-Ehh...

One more time.

He will take on the pipes.

He's going to have to wait a number of years

before I'm ready to give them up.

100 years after his grandfather travelled

from Canada to northern France,

Garth Newlands has made that same journey.

And with him, a precious cargo.

Returning to France for the first time since the war -

his grandfather's bagpipes.

Born in Toronto, Pipe Major Alexander Newlands

was the second son of an Edinburgh printer.

He'd worked as a commercial artist.

In 1914, and then a 24-year-old bachelor,

Newlands joined the 48th Highlanders of Canada.

They came about through a guy called Alexander Fraser,

who was the president of the Gaelic society of Toronto,

and he took it upon himself to say that Toronto needed to have

an Army regiment which showed military Scottishness.

Montreal had one, and had one since 1882,

and he felt that they really needed to have their own

and this was a phenomenon which later spread throughout Canada.

They came over to France,

they still called themselves the 48th Highlanders

despite the fact that they were the 15th Battalion

of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

So that Scottish identity -

they wore the same tartan, they played the same pipe music -

that still remained when they transferred

into the expeditionary force and went to do serious fighting.

The Highlanders fought at Ypres, at the Somme,

and in the spring of 1917 they came to Vimy Ridge.

For two and a half years, French and later British attempts

to capture this elevated German strongpoint had failed.

Four Canadian divisions, 30,000 men, would be the next to try.

And so, just before 5:30am on Easter Monday, 1917,

Garth's grandfather, Alexander Newlands,

struck up his pipes and prepared for the charge.

The ground in front of them was a nightmare.

It was mud, it was snowing.

There was a horrible wind which was swirling around.

He would have been in front of his company of troops,

piping them on, not responsible in an official way for getting them going,

but he would have felt responsible for moving these guys forwards

and taking the fight to the enemy.

Trying to think of what kind of courage that would have taken

for a piper to step up over the edge of the trench

and lead the soldiers into that battle

is a pretty scary thing to think about,

cos you're taking it...or giving it into someone else's hands

and hoping that you're going to be the one to make it through.

But you're also inspiring everyone else to take that next step,

and be courageous and continue on.

I think tradition played an important role, as well,

especially with the Canadian pipers, because they established themselves

at the Second Battle of Ypres, in April 1915,

and they really stood up.

It was the Canadians' first major battle.

He would have this idea of

"These are the pipers who have gone before me in my regiment,

"this is the standard to which I want to maintain myself."

Then there's also this dual aspect of,

coming from the 48th Highlanders of Toronto,

they were allied to the Gordon Highlanders in Scotland,

and they adopted their traditions.

All of these different traditions

would have been spurring your grandfather along.

Just 35 minutes after the initial attack,

the Canadians captured their first objective.

And, 40 minutes later, at 6:45am,

they began a second attack,

advancing even deeper into the German lines.

At some point in time I understand that my grandfather

put down his pipes because the battle started to get heavy.

He ended up losing his pipes for three days here.

Once the troops got to where they were going, he joined in.

He joined in fighting, and he would have had a sniper rifle

and he would have been picking off Germans as best he could.

The repeated Canadian advances took place in appalling conditions,

freezing temperatures and horizontal sleet.

Back at the Glasgow School of Art, Michael Stedman and Paul Wilson

have attempted to recreate how Garth's grandfather's pipes

might have sounded that awful Easter morning.

There's wind, rain, men's footsteps, and distant conversation going on.

Men are freezing cold, some of them are praying.

They're under terrible duress,

but I do think that the bagpipes provides a sense

of your own identity,

which is a necessary feeling.

You've got to do this for something,

whether it be for your wife, your children, your family,

your country, your cultural heritage,

I think the bagpipes distil all of that into one emotion,

which is just immensely powerful.

Of course, for some of these men,

it would have been the last sound that they heard.

BAGPIPES PLAY

RAIN PATTERS

RUMBLING

EXPLOSIONS

GUNFIRE

ARTILLERY FIRE

EXPLOSION

GUNFIRE

EXPLOSION

WHISTLE SOUNDS

MEN SHOUT

HEAVY GUNFIRE

It's really hard to put fully into words

what he would have been thinking about what was going on

and what his active part would be.

It's...

It's...an emotional thing, I guess.

The battle of Vimy Ridge would be remembered as a spectacular success.

In 1922, the French Government gifted the entire battlefield

to the people of Canada.

On that land was built the Canadian National Memorial

in memory of the 60,000 Canadians killed in four years of fighting.

And today the memorial plays host to a very special,

very personal tribute.

HE PLAYS: "Flowers Of The Forest"

The tune Flowers Of The Forest

was written as a tribute to the dead of the battle of Flodden in 1513.

500 years on, it has become the official lament

played by military pipers in remembrance of fallen comrades.

2,500 pipers had served in the Great War.

And, of that number, 600 were wounded...

and 500 were killed.

Garth's grandfather, Pipe Major Newlands, survived.

And, a century on, back at Vimy Ridge,

the sound of his pipes again fills the air.

It's...

It's great to bring them back.

I know that my grandfather did play an important part of the war...

..as a Pipe Major, as a piper, as a soldier.

I'm sure everyone can thank every soldier for that.

SONG: "Going To Pitlochry"