I transferred from the Royal Canadian Engineers to The Seaforth Highlanders in the fall of 1976. I'd been on a bridging exercise where several sappers had lost fingers or parts of fingers - pinched off by the Bailey bridge sections...

I thought "Jeez,I'm a piper - I NEED all my fingers" so the Infantry seemed a safer bet (hit a mine and yer ALL gone, none of this 'piece-at-a-time stuff') plus my dad and grandad had been Seaforths...

So I'm standing in the QM with a kilt (Kilt #2, Seaforth and HLI) wrapped around my hams... I must have looked doubtful because the Sergeant, he says: "Two words, lad - 'Dysentry' and 'Fornication'!

I was sold. 6 months later I was learning how to make them.