June 6th

[OC Richard]

EDIT: here is Captain Samson playing his tune The Sixth Of June 1944

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPz1b9Fxbis

He is such a great piper. He did a nice long interview on Piper's Persuasion which I found very informative and entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5yuqL0z8Ek

I felt in an odd way as if I was following his entire career. I have an old album of the Queen Victoria School pipe band and he's the Pipe Major, already taller than the other boys.

He was a young Pipe Corporal in the Gordons when I saw them on their 1987 North American tour.

Here he is as Pipe Major playing a lovely solo during the regiment's last years before amalgamation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS1o2LjhPBw&t=64s

In any case my family has been commemorating the anniversary of D Day by watching Band Of Brothers. My wife and my son have never seen it. We all need to see it.

My father-in-law, sadly no longer with us, was an Infantry Officer in WWII. He said Band Of Brothers was the most realistic WWII film he had seen.

[kilted redleg]

Just to get everyone up to date here is the last three including the current director of the Army [British] school of bagpipe music and highland drumming

Captain Stuart Samson (The Highlanders), 2003–2007
Captain Steven Small (Black Watch), 2007–2016
Major Gordon Rowan (Royal Regiment of Scotland), 2016–


Samson took a well deserved retirement in 2007. I don't know if he still is but was working at the National Piping Center [NPC]. I think he also plays with the Scottish Power PB.

[Brian Rose]

June 6th is our anniversary. My wife claims it was chosen because, as an historian and consumer of military history, it was a date I wouldn't forget. I contend that it was the first Saturday available in June. As the deed was done 39 years ago, it's kind of a useless argument these days.
We had three members of our congregation who made the trip across the channel. I spoke to one of them, asking about the miniature ribbon on his lapel. I guessed poorly. "It's a Silver Star" he told me quietly. I was in shock for a very long time. Such a quiet man. He was the last of the three to pass. One of his hospital nurses became his wife.