George Findlater Sergeant George Frederick Findlater VC ( 16 February 1872 – 4 March 1942 ) 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 feet 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 hall s , 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 . Early life . Findlater was born in 1872 at Turriff , Aberdeenshire , one of eleven children of Alexander Findlater , a miller , and his wife , Mary Ann Clark . He attended the school in Turriff but left at a young age to work as a farm labourer ; under the law then in force , children were permitted to leave school at thirteen . Two months after his sixteenth birthday , on 7 April 1888 , he travelled to Aberdeen and enlisted in the 2nd Battalion , Gordon Highlanders . The battalion was posted to Ceylon , where in 1891 he transferred to the 1st Battalion , then serving on the North - West Frontier of British India , now part of Pakistan . He first saw active combat there in March 1895 , at the Malakand Pass , where he was hit but not wounded ; later in the year , he served with the relief force in the Chitral Expedition . In December 1896 he was appointed as a piper in the battalion ' s band . The Gordons , in common with other Highland regiment s of the time , maintained a pipe band in each battalion for both ceremonial and military purposes ; the pipers were trained infantrymen , and accompanied the main force on operations . The following year , the 1st Battalion was assigned as part of the force for the Tirah campaign , an expedition into the mountains to secure the Khyber pass and the northern approaches to India . Dargai Heights . On 20 October 1897 , an attempt by a British force to take the strongly held Dargai Heights was beaten back , leaving three battalions pinned down under heavy fire from above and unable to withdraw . They were reinforced by the 1st Gordons , who were ordered to advance through the open ground and storm the heights , led by their five pipers . Findlater was wounded before reaching the hillside , with a superficial wound to his left foot and a broken right ankle . Unable to walk , he pulled himself to a boulder , propped himself up , and continued to play to encourage the advance . The infantry following behind successfully reached the hillside , climbed the heights , and dispersed the defenders . All observers agreed on the basics of the story , but the exact details of what happened were somewhat confused . The initial press reports describing the " wounded piper " took him to be Patrick Milne , the senior piper , and playing " Cock o ' the North " , the regimental march . It was quickly discovered that Milne had been unable to play – he had been wounded in the chest – and that Findlater had been the man involved , playing " The Haughs O ' Cromdale " . This was perhaps a more appropriate tune ; not only was it a quicker and livelier strathspey , but the content fitted the situation . The Battle of Cromdale had famously – perhaps apocryphally – seen a wounded Jacobite piper perch on a rock and play his comrades into battle , and the traditional ballad itself described how " the Gordons boldly did advance . . . upon the Haughs o ' Cromdale " . Findlater was evacuated to Rawalpindi where he was treated , and unable to continue in the Army as a result of his injuries , he was sent to Netley Hospital to convalesce . It was announced in May 1898 that he would receive the Victoria Cross , one of four men to be so honoured for actions at Dargai , and was personally decorated by Queen Victoria at Netley on 14 May , a few days before he was formally discharged from the Army . Public celebrity . The Gordons ' charge at Dargai had caught the imagination of the British public , and the romantic description of the wounded piper encouraging his comrades on was perhaps the most famous element of it . Whilst recovering , Findlater received a large number of public donations , including sets of bagpipes , and by at least one account , a proposal of marriage . The public interest increased sharply after he was awarded the Victoria Cross , and to supplement his Army pension Findlater arranged to appear at the Military Tournament , where he drew large crowds ; for just thirty performances , he was paid two - thirds as much as his annual Army pension of £46 . He then began to perform at music halls , first at the London Alhambra and then nationally , with his earnings climbing as high as £100 a week . Whilst popular with the crowds , Findlater was seen by many of the military establishment as deliberately profiting from the Victoria Cross . The War Office approached the management of the Alhambra to try and stop his performance , without success , sparking counter - criticism as to whether the Army had any standing to control the private engagements of a man who had already left the Army . Within the year , however , his fame began to turn sour ; he was implicated in a contentious breach of promise lawsuit in late 1898 , which led to heckling at his Scottish performances , and to avoid further scandal left the country to tour the United States and Canada . Later life . Following his return from North America , Findlater married his cousin Helen at Turriff in August 1899 . A year later , he took up the tenancy of a farm at Forglen , where he and Helen settled to begin a family ; they would have five children , two sons and three daughters . At the start of the First World War , Findlater re - enlisted in the Army , returning to his old regiment . He was posted to the 9th Battalion of the Gordons , a New Army battalion in 15th ( Scottish ) Division , where he was appointed as the sergeant piper ( or pipe major ) , the battalion ' s senior piper . He served with the regiment through its first year in France , including the Battle of Loos , before being invalided home in December 1915 . He continued to farm at Forglen , and was a member of the local pipe band at Turiff ; from 1919 to 1939 he served as its pipe major . He died in early 1942 , shortly after his seventieth birthday , of a heart attack . Legacy . 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 " features an animated discussion in the Sergeants Mess concerning exactly what tune Piper Findlater did play at the Dargai Heights , as even Findlater himself wasn ' t positive what it had been .