Posted on 11/08/2004 5:00:50 PM PST by SJackson
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq (Nov. 06, 2004) -- Amid the thunder of artillery and weapons fire, pipers are heard around Camp Fallujah blaring melodies from their age-old Celtic instruments.
Every day Lt. Col. Paul Sweeney, judge advocate lawyer, and Sgt. Steven Ammer, motor transportation specialist, hone their piping skills, unknowingly raising spirits as their tunes float on the wind to fellow Marines throughout the base.
“For me playing the bagpipes is just relaxing,” said Ammer. “Since I’ll be out here for seven months I figured I’d get some practice, so I had my wife mail my bagpipes to me. I feel renewed when I head back to work after each session.”
While Ammer and Sweeney perform songs like the Marines’ Hymn, service members who pass by stop in their tracks, pausing to listen to the notes that have played for almost 200 years.
“I’m Scottish so when I heard them playing, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” said Staff Sgt. Grant Smillie.
During the middle ages in Scotland and Ireland, the bagpipes were used to rally the troops into battle. The English outlawed the bagpipes in 1366 and declared them an instrument of war. Anyone caught playing the bagpipes were put to death.
“I’ve been playing close to three years,” said Sweeney. “I play with a pipe band back in the rear in Binghamton, New York. I carried mine on the plane all the way from Camp Pendleton.”
But Ammer and Sweeney aren’t the first Marines to pick up the bagpipes to play in a war zone. Several Marine pipers played during the bloody Battle of Peleliu. A Marine lieutenant was observed piping his amphibian tractor ashore on Iwo Jima. In Korea, Sgt. F.H. "Timmy" Killeen piped for his company of the 7th Marines during the numerous Inchon-Seoul night firefights.
“The bagpipes have been used in every major conflict with the Marines,” said Ammer.
Known as war or highland pipes, these instruments were also used during funeral ceremonies when burying fallen comrades. In the early days when a police officer or firefighter was killed in the line of duty, the Irish or Scottish forefathers within these departments ensured that their fallen brothers were buried with full honors. Today, that tradition transcends ethnic, racial and religious lines and the bagpipes are played at police, fire and military funerals regardless of race, color or creed.
“It’s pretty motivating to be here playing my bagpipes,” said Sweeney. “Aside from with my family and friends, I can’t think of a better place to be.”
March of Cambreath
[chorus]
Axes flash, broad sword swing
Shining armor’s piercing ring
Horses run with a polished shield
Fight those bastards ‘til they yield
[chorus 2]
Midnight mare and blood red roan
Fight to keep this land your own
Sound the horn and call the cry
How many of them can we make die?
Follow orders as you’re told
Make their yellow blood run cold
Fight until you die or drop
A force like ours is hard to stop
Close your mind to stress and pain
Fight ‘til you’re no longer sane
Let not one damn cur pass by
How many of them can we make die?
Guard your women, children well
Send these bastards back to hell
We’ll teach them the ways of war
And they won’t come here anymore
Use your shield and use your head
Fight ‘til everyone is dead
Raise the flag up to the sky
How many of them can we make die?
(music interlude)
Dawn has broke the time has come
Move your feet to the marching drum
We’ll win the war and pay the toll
We’ll fight as one in heart and soul
[chorus 2]
[chorus]
[chorus 2]
How many of them can we make die?
How many of them can we make die?
May everyone live long enough to hear the pipes played at least once in the Highlands.
That iz kool!!!!!!!!
Scotland and Robbie Burns forever!
Clan MacPherson Bump! Nothing like a set of bagpipes to get the military in the mood to do it's job! I guess I'll put in my "Pipes of Scotland" tape now...
It's not just the Scottish. If the hairs on the back of one's neck don't stand up when hearing Amazing Grace on the pipes, they ARE the dearly departed.
Pipes & Drums of Free Republic ping
Sassenach!! *\;-)
FR Pipes & Drums ping... if ye wish't.
Too bad we don't have one.
Ping to #28
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Make that Pipes, Drum and Bugles and you can count me in...Nothing beats a good old fashioned Drum and Bugle Corps show...
Here is what the Marine Corps Hymn sounds like on a bagpipe.
http://216.69.32.102/BAB/midi/marinecorps.mid
Brilliant use of psychological warfare (though it might constitute a war crime)...
Are there words for "Scotland the Brave"?
The Corps hymn is pretty bad (the modal scale messes up the fifth measure) but the very worst of all is the Star Wars Theme. Whoever first played that on the pipes should be hauled out and made to play with a leaky bag and stiff reeds, forever.
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