The hamlet of Longueval is barely more than a crossroads amid the rolling beet and potato fields of Picardy - so small it might barely register on the minds of motorists cruising the wide and handsome chalk acres of the Somme Valley.
It consists of a handful of houses, two bars, and a surprisingly large village hall - itself a proof of the vitality of local democracy in France. Local taxes, local government, local democracy, local pride.
There's a reason why Longueval is able to indulge its democratic appetites: it is that free men, strangers from abroad, were once prepared to fight to defend the freedom and democracy of France, twice over in the 20th century. Many might argue whether or not freedom and democracy were worth the shocking price that was paid, but the historic truth is that the price was paid, and few paid it in a more bizarrely anachronistic and astonishingly brave way than that which is commemorated in Longueval.
Little enough about the conduct of mankind during that time makes any sense to the modern mind: millions of men of men being funnelled towards the ravaged lands of northern France and to the strange new murderous technologies by which war was being conducted. Above in the skies, fighter-bombers; behind the trenches, thousands of artillery pieces; embedded in the second layer of trenches, machine guns with interlocking arcs of fire: and increasingly, the lumbering behemoths of the tank, all speaking of the new world in which men had to conduct the sordid business of battle.
And amid all this, a relic of a medieval past, a ludicrous reminder of ancient ways and ancient wars: bagpipers leading the way through the hurricanes of steel which swept the contemporary battlefield. It is difficult to consider anything so futile, or so foolhardy. For bagpipers in war made sense when halberd, pike and lance would meet cuirass, breastplate and broadsword. They might have made sort of sense at Waterloo or Balaclava, to rally the squares of infantry or propel thin red lines forward towards a human parapet of bayonets. But pipers with their animal-skin sacks, their drones and their chanters - these surely could have no impact whatever on the giant guns forged in the steel-furnaces of the Ruhr.
Yet this is precisely what happened as ancient tribal rituals collided with the metallurgies of Essen. We are used to accepting this sort of thing as being essentially African, with impis of assegai-bearing warriors in animal skins meeting the redcoats' Maxims, with entirely predictable outcomes; but pipers going into action on the western front represents similar cultural and military asymmetries. And just as the reasoning behind this must escape our understanding, so too must the valour of the pipers themselves.
They would rise from their trenches and stand on the parapet, summoning the men to follow; then they would turn and march towards the enemy, upright all the way, their pipes being no doubt inaudible, but visibly adding height and bulk to the advance. The men behind them could halt or seek cover, but the pipers' duty was to lead, and to do so without arms of any kind, and with one predictable outcome. By any and every standard, it was madness: a judgment that in no way dishonours the valour of the men concerned.
The breathtaking courage of the Scottish pipers was commemorated last year at a memorial wall at Longueval. Last weekend, hundreds of people gathered at that same place to remember the Irish pipers killed in action in the 1914-18 war. The badges of the Irish regiments have now been inserted in the wall, beneath the statue of a kilted, helmeted piper rising from the trenches.
That fine Irish gentleman Maj Gen Corran Purdon, was a prime mover in the campaign to honour the memory of the Irish bagpiper. Now aged (I think) 85, and the holder of a Military Cross earned as a commando during the last world war, he is as vigorous as a man half his age, provided the latter can do 100 press-ups a day as Corran does. He addressed the gathering in French, English and Irish - and no better man, for he has spent many years striving to reconcile the various military traditions of Irishness, returning to Ireland each summer to participate in the National Day of Commemoration on July 11th.
Our ambassador to France, Padraic MacKernan, was present; so too were Maj Gen Paddy Nowlan, formerly of the Defence Forces, and chairman of the Military Heritage of Ireland Trust; Major General The O'Morchue; and numerous others from Ireland who are interested in such matters. The guest of honour was the mayor of Longueval, the owner of the village's only two cafés, whose splendid girth and sartorial individuality are apparently encoded in the DNA of all French inn-keepers.
The ecumenical service was a beautifully judged mix of the religious, civilian and military, with the bugles, pipes and drums of the Royal Irish Regiment being supplemented by a Dutch bagpipe band (and yes, there is a story there: another day, perhaps).
There followed a generous vin d'honneur in the village hall in which the wine flowed without stint for two hours. Then the pipers - as pipers do when their whistles have been wetted - began to play, soft at first, then mounting in passion, while the drummers improvised their drumstick syncopations on table tops. And over the fields beyond Longueval came the echoing skirls from those Irish pipers who long ago left their bones and their pipes in Picardy. They thought they'd been forgotten.
They hadn't.