Army School hopes to create memorial for fallen

Great Britain’s Army School of Bagpipe Music & Highland Drumming hopes to raise enough funds to create a memorial for military pipers and drummers who have given their lives in conflicts in service of their country. The memorial would be erected at the school’s home at Inchdrewer House in Edinburgh.

According to organizer Captain Gordon Rowan, Second in Command at the school, staff and students have started to raise funds for materials and construction of the memorial, which will be a stone cairn with a bronze piper at the top. Fundraising efforts have included sponsored cycling, quiz nights and even leg waxing, with an aim to complete and unveil the memorial some time in 2013.

He said that £40,000 must be raised to complete the project.

Rowan is inviting pipers and drummers around the world to donate to the project, and said that the British Army itself “will not fund” the memorial.

In conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, six military pipers and drummers have died, and Rowan said that he does not know of an official military list of pipers and drummers who have died in battle.

Rowan said that a Facebook page is in the works and any donations to the cause are happily accepted by cheque made out to the ASBM&HD, sent to Captain Gordon Rowan, Inchdrewer House, 299 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH13 0LA Scotland.