Battle of Loos

battle of loos

Despite the gas, smoke, and heavy German rifle and

machine gun fire, Laidlaw calmly mounted the parapet

playing ‘Blue Bonnets over the Border’. His example

rallied the 7th King’s Own Scottish Borderers ‘and

sent them racing like mad towards those trenches’.

Recalling the charge, Laidlaw mentioned

‘There was smoke everywhere; the air simply

sizzled with bullets, the wet, whitey-grey

ground squirted hell-fire on every side as the

big shells burst’.

Piper Laidlaw was wounded twice in the advance, but

only sought treatment after his battalion was in the

third line of German trenches.

‘Funny, but having been hit twice I wasn’t

worrying a bit about getting plugged again,

but I remember feeling horribly afraid a

bullet might puncture the bag, and so put the

pipes out of action’.

Daniel Laidlaw was a 40 year old, time-expired

soldier. On the outbreak of war he was married with

four children, and employed as a warehouseman with

Alnwick Co-Operative Society. Whilst conscious of

his commitments, like many others he was keen to

volunteer and ‘do his bit’.

‘I told the missus I couldn’t stick at home.

I’d have to be out in France and in the thick

of it’.

25 Ibid

26 Ibid

27 Ibid