To many a soldier, wars carry memories of friends and foes but to "Lone Piper" Bill Jenkins, war memorials and graves depict a deeper sense of oneness sans frontiers. An ex-Royal marine commando, this dauntless sixtyseven year-old pensioner from Liverpool, England will be visiting this November the graves of the fallen heroes in India many of whose names are not known.

Playing his bagpipe in the spirit of a true highlander at war cemeteries, Jenkins considers this as a pilgrimage. In 1991, he had travelled to Greece visiting the graves of 20,000 Commonwealth soldiers. This earned him the nick name the ‘‘Lone Piper." It was there that he saw in a gypsy suburb of Thessoloniki the Monistir Road Indian Cemetery, the graves of 357 Indian soldiers who died in Greece in the 1914 - 1918 war.

"In September last, I sat alone and read the names of the young men and I was aware that they had in fact fought for freedom," says Bill. He realised that the relatives of these young Indian men had probably never been able to visit their graves or monuments. "I thought of the inscription on the Naga Stone in Kohima War Cemetery which says - ‘‘When you go home tell them of us and say for their tomorrow we gave our today’’, adds Bill.

The inscription was erected as a message from the Commonwealth soldiers buried there to the people of their home towns but there was nobody to carry that message from Greece to India. So Bill promised to be the messenger. Bill Jenkins’ journey would thus start from Mumbai through Pune, Delhi, Meerut, Ranchi, Kolkata, Darjeeling, Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Digboi, Kohima and Imphal. The people of these places would find Bill Jenkins standing in his uniform and playing the bagpipe at the monuments there as a way of bringing the message 'home’. Initially he also had plans to visit the homes of the Indian men at rest in the Monistir Road Indian Cemetery, but to his utter dismay he found that many were known only to God as they were unknown soldiers.

So in November this year, Bill Jenkins will be somewhere in India in his highland uniform playing a lament on his bagpipe and saluting all the young men, known and unknown who died for freedom.