Ypres

 

The Railway Dugouts Burial Ground, Ypres

 

Watching an edition of The Repair Shop the other day (yes, I do watch the occasional bit of TV, even though I moan constantly about the mostly rubbish programming). I was particularly struck by an object brought in, as usual, for rescue: a set of bagpipes in a totally parlous state - well, in bits to be honest - with a fascinating history  behind them. It was a set of pipes that had seen service in the trenches of World War I. I can't recall the regiment or the particular battles that the original owner of these pipes was in but he was one of some two and half thousand pipers spread over 100 battalions, of whom five hundred were killed and six hundred wounded [source: The Scotsman]. The piper concerned was one of the luckier half, surviving the war.

Pipers were to be found not only in Scottish Regiments, but throughout the whole of the British Army and many Commonwealth Regiments, including Canada, Australia and South Africa, had pipers. Reading this brought to mind the stop we made at Ypres on our way through Belgium into France back in 1983. We lingered there for an hour or so, taking in the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground and The Menin Gate. The Railway Dugouts Burial Ground contains two thousand, four hundred and sixty-three graves and was in use from April 1915 until the Armistice in 1918.

Whilst The Menin Gate is a massive, sombre and emotionally challenging memorial to fifty-four thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-six fallen, I found the Railway Dugouts cemetery particularly poignant, reflecting as it does the often tiny redoubts scattered throughout The Western Front; bitter and bloody standoffs over pitifully small patches of land. It stands as a reminder of the ultimate futility of wars fought by ordinary men at the behest of governments and ruling classes, throughout history. An unarmed piper leading his comrades into battle is bravery in itself, ultimately shameful in its waste of human life; but that lone piper encapsulates in one succinct symbol the ambivalent nature of human conflict.

This chain of reflections reminded me that Dad had visited the War Graves in Belgium and France on two occasions; the only two foreign trips he made in his life. On one of these trips, the group on the trip were staying in a rather decent hotel, and in the evening, after dinner, they were having drinks in the bar. It was noticed that the room housed a rather fabulous Steinway concert grand piano, sitting there doing nothing. After being prodded into action by his mates [he never took much persuasion] Dad asked behind the bar if he could play a tune or two. They were more than happy that there was a free, gratis musician in the house and said yes, of course.

Several hours later, he was still playing; drinks lining up on the top of the piano, having not repeated a single tune all night - as I've written before, he couldn't read a note of music and only played in the one key, but he knew hundreds of popular tunes by heart, all learned by ear. I really do wish I'd been there that night.