Vitesse wrote:As I understand it, the playing of the pipes during WW2 on the field of battle was actually against military regulations and it happened on only a few occasions. This was because, during the early months of the Great War, there had been a horrifying toll of pipers who were leading attacks across open ground...
Returning to WW2: Dieppe and Normandy have already been mentioned. Pipes were also played on the battlefield at El Alamein and during the crossing of the Rhine. I have a feeling that there was a piper in the Battle of Kohima too.
Perhaps it was a little more common than you suggest here. I noted the following passage describing one of the attacks in the Tobruk breakout on Nov 21st, 1941, in which the 2nd Battalion The Black Watch (with Matildas of 4th RTR leading) assaulted the strongpoint of "Tiger", defended by a mixed force of Germans and Italians:
"The defenders of Tiger lived up to the British nickname for their position and offered ferocious resistance, to which was added heavy fire from neighbouring strongpoints. As detachments of I tanks slowly closed in from three sides, the bagpipes (hitherto silent for security reasons) sounded above the noise of battle. One piper, wounded, continued to play where he fell. Then at 9 a.m. the battalion, now numbering fewer than 200, rose in the wake of B Squadron and took Tiger at the point of the bayonet. One stubborn party of machine-gunners held out in the south-west until the tanks ran over it." (
The Relief of Tobruk, W.E. Murphy, pp. 92-93)
Unfortunately, no mention there of what the pipers played...
David R