The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald
witherin’ fire, and ’Cock o’ the North’ was being sounded up the length and breadth of the land, in music halls, and by brass bands, and by street fiddlers, and everybody. The kids wass singing it. And Findlater, when his legs wass mended, suddenly took thought, and said to his pal, the corporal piper, ‘Ye know, I’m no’ certain, but I doubt it wass the regimental march I played at all. I think it was “Haughs o’ Cromdale”.’
“The corporal piper considered this, and cast his mind back to the battle, and said Findlater was right. It wasnae ’Cock o’ the North’ at all, but he didnae think it was ’Haughs o’ Cromdale’ either; by his recollection it was ‘The Black Bear’.
“They argued awa’, and got naewhere. So they called on the Company Sergeant-Major, who confessed he couldnae tell one from t’ither, but thought it might have been ‘Bonnie Dundee’.
“Finally, it got to the Colonel’s ears, and he wass dismayed. Here wass the fame of Piper Findlater ringin’ through the land, and everyone talking about how he had played ‘Cock o’ the North’ in the face of the enemy, and the man himself wasnae sure what he had played at all. There wass consternation throughout the battalion. ’A fine thing this,’ says the Colonel. ‘If this gets out we’ll be the laughin’-stock o’ the Army. Determine at once what tune he played, and let’s have no more damned nonsense.’
“But they couldn’t do it. Every man who had been within earshot on the Dargai slope, as soon as you asked him, had a different notion of what the tune was, but how could they be sure, with the bullets flying and them grappling with their bayonets against the Khyber knives? You have to have a very appreciative ear for music to pay much heed to it at a time like that. One thing they decided: there was general agreement that whatever he played, it wasn’t ‘Lovat’s Lament’.”
“Lovat’s Lament” is a dirge; played with feeling it can make Handel’s largo sound like the Beatles.
The pipe-sergeant beamed at us. “Well, there it was. No one was certain at all. So the Colonel did the only thing there was to do. He sent for the Regimental Sergeant-Major. ‘Major,’ says he, ‘what did Piper Findlater play on the Dargai Heights?’
“The R.S.M. never blinked. ’“Cock o’ the North”, sir,’ says he. ‘Ye’re sure?’ says the Colonel. ‘Positive,’ says the R.S.M. ‘Thank God for that,’ says the Colonel. And it was only later that it occurred to him that the R.S.M. had not been within half a mile of Findlater during the battle, and couldn’t know at all. But ‘Cock o’ the North’ the R.S.M. had said, and ‘Cock o’ the North’ it has been ever since, and always will be.”
Sergeant McGaw made impatient noises. “What the hell did it matter, anyway? They took the heights, and he won his V.C. It would have been just the same if he had been playin’ ‘Roll out the barrel’.”
The pipe-sergeant swelled up at once. “You know nothing, McGaw. You have neither soul nor experience. Isn’t it important that regimental history should be right, and that people shouldn’t have their confidence disturbed? Suppose it was to transpire at this point that Nelson at Trafalgar had said nothing about England expecting, but had remarked instead that he was about due for leave, and once the battle was over it was him for a crafty forty-eight-hour pass?”
“Not the same thing at a’,” said McGaw.
“You’re descending to the trivial,” said the R.S.M.
“The country would degenerate at once!” cried the pipe-sergeant, and at this point I finally made my excuses, thanked them for their hospitality, and left them in the throes of philosophic debate.
Back in our own mess, I mentioned to the Colonel that I had been entertained by the sergeants, and had heard of the Findlater controversy. He smiled and said:
“Oh, yes, that one. It comes up now and then, not so often now, because of course the survivors are thinning out.” He sighed. “He was a great old fellow, you know, Findlater. I used to see him going about. Indeed, touching on the pipe-sergeant’s story, I even asked him once what he did play at Dargai.”
“What did he say?”
“Wasn’t quite sure. Of course, he was an old man then. He had an idea it might have been ‘The Barren Rocks of Aden’. Or possibly ’The 79th’s Farewell to Gibraltar’. I had my own theory at one time, I forget why, that it must have been ‘The Burning Sands of Egypt’.”
I digested this. “So it’s never been settled, then?”
“Settled? Of course it has. He played ‘Cock o’ the North’. Everyone knows that.”
“Yes, sir, but how do they know?”
The Colonel looked at me as at a rather dim-witted child. “The R.S.M. said so.”
“Of course,” I said. “Foolish of me. I was forgetting.”
It is one of the little ironies of Army life that mounting guard is usually more of an ordeal than actually standing guard. And frequently the amount of anguish involved in mounting is in inverse proportion to the importance of the object to be guarded. For example, as a young soldier I have been turned out in the middle of the night in jungle country, unwashed, half-dressed, with a bully-beef sandwich in one hand and a rifle in the other, to provide an impromptu bodyguard for the great Slim himself; this was accomplished at ten seconds’ notice, without ceremonial. On the other hand, I have spent hours perfecting my brass and blanco to stand sentry on a bank in Rangoon which had no roof, no windows, and had been gutted by the Japanese anyway.
This merely proves that Satan finds mischief for idle hands, and there are few hands idler than those of military authority outside the firing line.
Edinburgh Castle, from the guards’ point of view, is in a class by itself. It is tremendously important, in a traditional rather than a strategic sense; if someone broke into it and pinched Mons Meg the actual well-being of the country would not be affected, but the blow to national prestige would be tremendous. The papers would be full of it. Consequently, providing a guard for the Castle involves—or used to—more frantic preparation, ceremonial, organisation, and general nervous tension than the filming of “Ben Hur”. It is rather like a combination of putting on a Paris fashion display and planning a commando raid, and the fact that its object is to provide a skeleton guard which couldn’t stop a marauding party of intelligent Brownies is, in the military view, beside the point.
It was a few months after our battalion had come home from the Middle East to be stationed near Edinburgh. It was one of those summers just after the war when there was gaiety and eagerness in the air, and the dark years were just behind and everyone was enjoying themselves. Princes Street was all sunshine and uniforms and pretty dresses, the American Fleet was in the Forth, royalty was coming to town, God was in his heaven, and I was once again the battalion orderly officer. It was a restful job, wandering round barracks drinking cups of tea in the cookhouse, chivvying the Jocks out of the canteen at closing time, casting a critical eye at the guards and picquets, and generally taking life easy—until some genius in the High Command woke up one morning with the brilliant idea that during the royal visit, with distinguished American naval dignitaries also being on hand, it would be nice to have a Highland regiment on guard at the Castle. That meant us, and us meant me.
The turmoil that broke out from our orderly room was indescribable. The Colonel, that kindly, vulture-faced man who had looked Japanese guards in the face on the Moulmein Railway and said, “No”, now became visibly agitated for the first time in living memory; he took me aside, addressed me as “Young Dand”, twisted his moustache, and spoke rapidly and incoherently about the importance of putting on a good show. The Adjutant got on the other side of me and rattled instructions into my ear, impressing the necessity of perfect organisation, split-second timing, immaculate appearance, and perfect coordination. He gave me to understand that the slightest slip