A descendant a piper and soldier has revealed his grandad’s composition is now held in a presidential library.
Yesterday the Evening Express told how the late William Watt had fought alongside his brother Peter during the Battle of the Somme.
The siblings, from Peterculter, were both privates in the 7th Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders.
In the final chapter of the battle at Beaumont-Hamel, Peter tragically perished aged 18.
After the war, William moved to Winnipeg in Canada to work.
Related: Tale of two brothers at the Somme with very different fates
Even though they never met, grandson Kris said William inspired him to pick up the Great Highland Bagpipes too.
Kris, 40, of British Columbia, said: “He had a passion for the pipes like no one else.
“He played anywhere and everywhere. Because he worked with the railway he could travel all over. He was a prolific writer of music – ideas would strike him in the strangest of places.
“He used to write tunes on the back of cigarette packages then go home and put them on to manuscript.”
William wrote Lament to John F Kennedy shortly after the president’s assassination in 1963 and the piece got passed to the politician’s family via a friend.
Kris said the original composition is now held in the John F Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts.
Kris has the instrument his grandad brought over to Canada with him in 1922.
The electrician added: “As a piper I think about how he felt writing music.
“It brings you back to a certain place in your life.
“He used it not only as a tool to record his own history but to tell others what he was thinking about.”
Kris said his grandfather, who passed away in 1973, never spoke about the war, according to family members.
One story the family love to tell involved William being shunned from a music competition for being too old, aged 65.
But the popular piper had so much support others said they would pull out if he wasn’t allowed to compete.
William went on to finish second.