It was still dark when I arrived at Newtown Park in Johns Creek at 5:45 a.m. on November 11th, on the chilly side in the upper 30’s. I saw Kari’s big Toyota 4 Runner in the parking lot already. No Bob. (Surprise—he’s usually the first one anywhere we go.) I got out of my car and jumped into the passenger seat of Kari’s warm truck to go over the details.
A car pulled into the lot. Not Bob. Another one. Also not Bob. A guy got out and walked over to us. Kari lowered the window.
“Do you know what the plan is?” the guy asked. I didn’t know who he was and could not be certain why he was there. I replied “I know what our plan is.” In fact he was there because he had heard about what we were planning to do. He was a veteran.
As it neared six, Kari and I got our pipes out, put on our glengarries, and headed over to Veterans’ Memorial Walk, followed now by five folks. We went up to the top of the stairs at the start of the Walk, turned, and at 6:00 a.m., struck up and played “The Battle’s O’er.”
Just as we were striking in, another car pulled up, a kilted figure jumped out and ran. Bob joined us just in time to add harmonies on the repeat.
The Batle’s Over was written to commemorate cessation of hostilities in the Great War of 1914-1918. One hundred years ago that morning at 6:00 a.m., the warring parties signed the Armistice to end the Great War—it would take effect at 11:00 a.m., when the fighting would cease in what eventually would be renamed “World War I.” The war that was to end all wars didn’t, of course. It postponed hostilities for some 20 or so years, when World War II commenced. Nor did that one end all wars, but that’s a subject for another time.
As a special tribute on the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI, pipers all over the U.K. and in several other countries around the world played “The Battle’s O’er” at 6:00 a.m. in their respective time zones at churches and monuments. Some 2,600 pipers joined in. Apparently that only slightly exceeds the number of pipers who died in that war. Armed only with their instruments, pipers led their regiments “over the top” and suffered horrible casualty rates (but a tiny fraction of that war’s casualties). It was the last time the British army called on pipers officially for that duty. (In WWII, there were a few pipers that played in the midst of the action, notably Bill Millin on D-Day, though officially they were not authorized to do so.)
After playing the march, I read out a “Tribute to the Millions,” text provided by the organizers of the Tribute. It remembered all those involved in that conflagration. I added “and all those since.”
I carried with me the Victory Medal of my great uncle, Alexander C. Morrison. Uncle Alec had emigrated from Scotland to the U.S. and then joined the Yanks to go over and fight when the U.S. entered the war. His medal had two bars on it: “Defensive Sector” and “Meuse-Argonne” (that large final battle). Uncle Alec survived the war. He was an old man when he gave me his medal long ago. He didn’t say much, but it held a lot of significance for him.
We three pipers then struck up and played two more tunes written in the time of the Great War: The Battle of the Somme, and The Bloody Fields of Flanders.
Then we came down the steps and chatted with the folks that had come out in the cold dark. Three were veterans—two had fought in Viet Nam, one in Panama. The other two folks had just come to honor veterans. They took a picture of the veterans with us pipers. We all shook hands, and then left the veterans to their thoughts and memories.