On the worst days in military history, some men walked forward carrying no rifle at all — only their bagpipes. The Pipes of War is a new podcast celebrating and remembering the pipers of the past and present: the instrument that led men into battle, and the men and women who played it.

Host Ian Williams — a piper for more than four decades and the foremost authority on Piper James Cleland Richardson, VC — introduces the project: its roots in the 1920 book The Pipes of War by Seton and Grant, which recorded some 500 pipers killed and 600 wounded in the Great War; his 20-plus years of research into Jimmy Richardson and the battlefield pipes of Regina Trench; and the mission to dig through archives, regimental museums, family letters, and diaries to bring forgotten names back into the light.

Coming episodes feature pipers who fo ...