The Last Piper

I'm listening to a new CD I bought from my instructor/retailer Lynne from the House of Bagpipes. It's called The Last Piper, a tribute to Harry Lunan by four of the world's greatest solo pipers (Gordon Walker, Angus MacColl, Roddy MacLeod, and Stuart Shedden).

Harry Luden died in 1994 at the age of 99. He was the last surviving piper to have played in battle during World War I. From the liner notes:

Harry Lunan joined the Gordon Highlanders in 1913 as a a piper, for which he received one penny a day extra pay. During the First World War he took part in the horrendous carnage of the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, and in which the British Army lost 60,000 men on the first day. At the attack on High Wood, Harry Lunan, armed only with his bagpipe, led a suicidal charge into machine-gun fire to reach the enemy trenches. This is how he described the action, "I just played whatever came in to 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."