No headpine

These men of the Tyneside Irish Brigade were led into the carnage of the Battle of the Somme by a piper. History has not recorded that piper's name - but his pipes have just been discovered in New York.

The Tyneside Irish was raised in the early months of the First World War from the large numbers of Roman Catholic men in the County Durham coalfield.

Many of their fathers and grandfathers had come to the county after the 1847 Irish potato famine in search of work in the pits, and in late 1914 they organised themselves to fight for their king and country.

As they advanced out of their trenches on that fateful morning of July 1, 1916, the Brigade Pipes and Drums were in the middle, beating time as the men marched into the German gunfire.

An Irish historian, Joseph Keating, reported: "At Albert, an Irish Piper from Tyneside found himself compelled to leap out of the trench at the signal to advance, and play his company over the parapet into action. He marched ahead through a storm of bullets which were wounding or killing his comrades all around him, until he himself fell among the wounded."

The Germans knew they were coming, and the Tyneside Irish paid a heavy price: 22 officers and 574 men were killed; 53 officers and 1,522 men were wounded. Those figures are the bare minimum, as men were dying of their wounds years - and in some cases, decades - later.

The fate of the piper is not known, but his pipes were collected by brigade chaplain, Father George McBrearty, who had himself been wounded in the course of the conflict. After the war, Fr McBrearty became a curate at the Church of Our Lady and St Thomas in Willington and, when he left the parish in December 1923, he presented the pipes to William Robinson, who had served with the Durham Light Infantry. The priest asked the parishoner to ensure that the pipes remained in his family.

In 1929, William and his wife and three children emigrated to America in search of a better life. He worked on the Long Island Railroad and passed the pipes onto his children. Recently refurbished, they are now in the hands of his grandson Vincent, an accomplished piper, who played them in March's St Patrick's Day Parade in New York.

Knowledge of the pipe's existence has reached County Durham via the Internet. William Robinson's son, also William, was researching the family history and came across John Sheen who has written the definitive history of Tyneside Irish. In turn, Mr Sheen passed him onto Jim and Mary Connor of Durham, who hailed from Willington and whose ancestors also fought with the Tyneside Irish. Indeed, Jim's grandmother turned out to be the sister of William's grandmother.

And so the connection between Durham and New York was made. "I'm sure the unknown Tyneside Irish piper would be delighted to know that in this millennium year, his pipes had been played once again to excite and elate Celtic hearts in one of the world's greatest parades," said Jim.