LAST OF THE BARDS

Evening Star, Issue 16629, 11 January 1918, Page 5

LAST OF THE BARDS

WITH IRISH BRIGADE. PIPING INTO ACTION. Our brigade being an Irish one of some -repute, each battalion came out to France equipped with the Irish war pipes, which played furiously as we marched through the town and vilage when on the trek, and provoked the fear and admiration of all the French population from four years old and upwards. The first big offensive in which the brigade took part played havoc with the men whose military training and courage fitted them so blow the ancestral pipes of Finn, the son of Cumal and his Fina, and only a teamans was left in Israel who could produce the warlike strains of old (wrote “R. Me.,” ni the ‘Manchester Guardian’). Still, the ancient minstrelsy was not allowed to die out altogether. When all that was left of the brigade, mustering about 800 strong, was drawn up in a hollow square and harangued by the army commander, the divisional band of soft-tongued, brazen instruments was brought upon the scene; but the surviving pipers brought their weapons as well, and in the dispute for precedence which ensued the pipes prevailed over the cymbals, and the divisional hand was compelled to take a back seat when the brigade finally marched past and saluted the n.0.0.s and men who had been newly decorated. The pipers, about four or five in number, in. place of the former 16 or 17, took the load, and it was to the skirl of ‘ The Wearing of the Green’ that we marched back to billets, thin’dngof the phantom army that once kept step with us to the same strains, but now lay still and eilent for ever. Almost the only surviving piper in our battalion was Lanca-corporal Rogan, who now became pipe-major, and proceeded to re-form the nucleus of a baud. Aged anything between 40 and 60, ruddy of countenance and untrammelled by the fetish of teetotalism, Rogan had a generous share of of the Bohemialusm traditional to his profession. Ho had a keen wit, ioved all the girls in the estaminets with an impartial if shifting affection, and was fully conscious of all the glory and dignity involved in his position when he piped at the head of his battalion. —To Death or Glory.— It was a spectacle of military .splendor to see A Company marching off to death or glory in the tranches with Rogan and his acolytes blowing and drumming at their head. Brady, the wit of the mess, once said it was more like the travelling circus making its annual entry into Dmmfamham, but then Brady was a man painfully lacking in military perspective. Fitzgerald, the company commander, would march with the first platoon immediately behind the baud, with a pack half the size of a house on his shoulders, and haversack, field glasses, and revolver suspended from his belt. Mullan, the mess cook, carrying two saucepans and a kitten, in addition to his pack and rifle, would be in the rear, and the intervening space would be taken up with warriors whose military calling was for the moment somewhat obscured by the amount of domestic apparatus which an absence of two or three weeks from the billet made it incumbent on them to cany. • , As we marched through a ruined village where another unit was billetted, old Irish stiffs would rush out from nook and comer with tears in their eyes. Scots, for whom Rogan had a- supreme contempt, would wave their bonnets in admiring applause, and A Company’s first platoon would gradually crawl on its sorrowful way towards the communication trench, where they parted company with the band. —Eogan’s Fiddle.— But, if we may use a musical metaphor, Rogan had other strings to his bow besides the pipes. When, ws were on the trek one of his faithful satellites, a slight youth, an orphan from an industrial school, might be seen carrying a black violin case beneath his .pack. This was Hogan’s fiddle, and, after the true bardic fashion, it was home for hiss by an orphan hoy. At all company enter, taimnenfas Rogan and his fiddle played a conspicuous part. If there was a “spread” at the officers’ mess the strains of the fiddle could he heard before the clatter of the plates in the kitchen had died away; and as scon as the cloth was removed Rogan, often accompanied by some chosen songsters from the ranks, would be introduced to the mess, and an impromptu concert, sometimes followed by an even more impromptu dance, would follow. When in due season it came the turn of our division to go over the top again, Rogan was most anxious to go over with the boys and play them on to victory. But the* e was only one Regan, in the and to his great grief the order came that ho must stay behind and play the troops back from battle,, though not actually into it. For many days before zero hour was due Rogan was disconsolate, and when on the night prior to the advance he said good-bye to°all the boys who were going up into position he was noticed to ho filled with a melancholy which nothing but frequent potations of smuggled rum could dispel. —Over the Top.— . But a strange thing happened when A Company started on their-.journey over the top the next morning—the journey that was to break up the old company for ever and leave_ it as shattered and mangled as the remains of Arras Cathedral. The din of the barrage was alb hut deafening, and men soon began to fall from the Boche machine gun bullets, which whistled with an ominous sound. But over and above all the row something like a shriek caught Fitzgerald’s ear. He glanced back. There, as though he had fallen from the clouds! was Rogan, following a few paces behind him, with a rifle slung over his shoulder and the pipes clasped firmly in his arms. He had crept into the trenches after the last company the night before, found his way -up to A Company’s line, where the men had been only too glad to conceal him in a dugout, and in the end ho gob his wish and went over the top with the boys. Rogan and his pipes became a casualty before many minutes, but both were subsequently patched up and home from the field on tbe> same, stretcher. After a great struggle Fitzgerald eventually obtained for Rogan a French decoration, which he persudaded Kogan was only aw»ied to men of great musical talent, and to-day tho lance-corporal bard has a comfortable job at the base depot, where the strains of his fiddle may still be heard as of bid. As for tho pipes he has pinned a gilt stripe on tho bag to show that they have been wounded, “and when a draft for the old brigade marches down to the siding Rogan and his pipes are always there to play them off. He is at present reported to,be-engaged- in composing an appropriate- setting on the pipes for Mat fine old Irish tune ‘ Apres la Guerre Pmie. We all of us wish him luck with it.