page_title: George Findlater
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: George Findlater / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Medals of Piper George Findlater VC on display at the Gordon Highlanders Museum.
context_page_description: Sergeant George Frederick Findlater VC was a Scottish soldier in the British Army, who was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry, for his role in the Tirah Campaign. On 20 October 1897, Findlater, then a junior piper in the Gordon Highlanders, was shot in the ankles during an advance against opposing defences at the Battle of the Dargai Heights; unable to walk, and exposed to enemy fire, he continued playing, to encourage the battalion's advance. The event was widely covered in the press, making Findlater a public hero.
  After receiving the Victoria Cross, Findlater supplemented his Army pension by performing at music halls, much to the outrage of the military establishment, but after growing scandal he retired to take up farming in Banffshire in 1899. In 1914, he re-enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders for the First World War; he served as the senior piper for the 9th Battalion until the end of 1915, when he returned home because of ill health. Active in a local pipe band, he continued to farm until his death in 1942, aged 70.
context_section_description: Whilst his moment of personal celebrity was fleeting, Findlater remained a popular figure in the public memory, continuing to be a subject of artwork and stories for some years. He was the focal point of Edward Hale's painting Piper Findlater winning the VC (1897), Stanley Berkeley's Charge of the Gordon Highlanders (1897), Vereker Hamilton's Piper Findlater at Dargai (1898), Richard Caton Woodville's The Storming of Dargai Heights (1898) and Robert Gibb's Dargai (1909). Findlater's playing at Dargai, along with the charge itself, became one of the more well-remembered moments of the Gordons' regimental history; they later applied for the Dargai Heights to be recognised as a battle honour, the only one of the nine participating regiments to do so, but were declined.
  One of the "Dand MacNeil" stories in George MacDonald Fraser's The General Danced at Dawn concerns an animated discussion in the Sergeants Mess concerning exactly what tune Piper Findlater did play at the Dargai Heights, Findlater himself not being positive what it had been.
caption: The medals awarded to Findlater on display at the Gordon Highlanders Museum, 2017
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