Days and nights merged, one into another. All track of time was lost. For fourteen days I was never out of that inferno, but I never knew how long it was until I got out and checked up on the calendar. In the meantime, the Northumbrian Division had been relieved by a Scottish Division. Well do I remember when they came in.

It was "hell to the Captain," that morning. For many days we had endured such a hurricane of shells as should, theoretically, have annihilated any force. Our parapets were blown down and dead and wounded were lying all around. The Border Regiment and the Durham Light Infantry, who were on our right and not subjected to the heavy shelling, had sent in many volunteer stretcher-bearers and they worked heroically, but the casualties mounted so fast that, even with their help, it was impossible to evacuate all the wounded. As to the dead, it was out of the question to even think of moving them, so we did the best we could - laid them up, out of the way, on firing step or parados - anywhere we did not have to step on them. Hell? Yes, Ma'am: it was all that and then some.

The Fusiliers and the Yorks had taken their dose and were whittled down to a point where lieutenants were commanding battalions and sergeants commanded companies. To relieve them these Scots were sent in. They were Gordons and Royal Scots, mostly new, replacement men who had never before been under fire and here they sent them into one of the nastiest and bitterest fights ever waged on the Western Front. They were "braw laddies," lank and lean but tall and strong; fresh from the heather of their native land, uncertain but willing, they were going to meet death half-way - and they knew it.

We had been in the fight so long that it was no longer a novelty, but to those youngsters, it must have seemed like something worse than Dante ever dreamed about. But, they came in; and, wonder of wonders, their pipers came with them. That was the first time I ever heard the bagpipes in battle. We had a pipe-band in our battalion and a good one, too, but, during the time we were simply holding the line, the pipers and all the other bandsmen served as stretcher-bearers and first-aid men - getting the wounded out and back to the dressing stations which were anywhere from a mile to three miles in the rear. But now we learned (we saw the same thing several times thereafter), that when the Scots go into battle, or over the top, in an offensive, their pipers go along, or, at least the Pipe Major and perhaps, another one or two, to "play them in".

Man! Man! if you have never seen it, you can never get the thrill. Marching along as though on parade, never missing a note or a step, skirling those wild, heartrending airs that date back to the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie, they march into battle as though no such things as bullets or shells existed.

Well, here they came, Gordons ahead - a few old timers with ribbons that dated back to Kandahar - and the youngsters following. They had come through a tough barrage and lost quite a lot of men and the recruits were looking pretty white. I happened to be at the mouth of the communication trench when they arrived, and stood by to watch them. Six generations have passed since my ancestors came from Scotland but I take no shame in telling you that, as I watched those boys walk into that fight, scared though they were, with their chins up and their rifles ready - and the pipers playing "The Cock o' the North," which was our own Regimental air, I cried like a baby; aye, cried; while, all the time I was calling out to them, "Go to it, lads, it's a good fight; go in and do your best." The old timers gave me a wave of the hand and the younkers seemed to perk up a bit. I followed along, as we had some half-dozen machine guns up where they were going and I was due there, anyway. The pipers changed to "The March of Gordon's Own" but it was all the same to me. I was ready and eager, right then, to march to hell and beyond, behind that music. (?) Is it music, or just a noise? You will never prove it by me, but I do know that whenever I hear it I want to go out and kill somebody.

They did not last long, those Scots. No one lasted very long in that inferno, excepting a few ornery Emma Gees who were too tough to die just yet. But they performed gloriously during the time they were there. I saw a company of them engage in hand-to-hand combat with a greatly superior (numerically) force of Germans. It was a bayonet fight, pure and simple, and when it was ended, there was not a living German on the field, and no prisoners were taken. Strong, agile, long-legged - the slower, calculating Boche had no chance against them. As I watched, from my vantage point on the parapet, unable to fire because of the way they were mixed up in the melee, I could not but think of the stories I had read of Bannockburn, Culloden and many other bloody battles that figure largely in Scottish history. I imagined the claymore in place of the modern bayonet; and, though I could hear nothing amid the continuous crash of shells, I fancied that tey were shouting the old Gaelic battle cries.

But the shells got them eventually, as they got everybody who stayed too long in one place. They melted away. That six-hundred-yard bit of ground claimed more than ten thousand lives during that week...

(Thanks to Kim for the inspiration.)