Piper's Price

As a midget step in the Pentagon's forced march toward economy, Air Force Chief of Staff John Ryan wants his service to scotch its eleven-man bagpipe and drum contingent. The ostensible reason is to save $50,000 a year; some suggest that Mrs. Ryan cringes at the sight of American fighting men in the national costume of a foreign land. Anyway, the pipes that wailed a lament at Jack Kennedy's funeral, welcomed distinguished White House visitors, and enlivened countless county fairs throughout the U.S., are scheduled to sound their own dirge at a final Washington concert this month.

To be sure, bare-kneed bagpipers would be useless skirling through the booby-trapped jungles of Viet Nam. They would be hopelessly muffled by the thunder of an 1CBM. Yet the strident music that has emboldened soldiers for centuries has powerful defenders. A number of influential Congressmen, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman L. Mendel Rivers, whose mother was of the fabled piper family of McCay, and Minnesota Republican Clark MacGregor, remember their Scottish blood and are making Defense Secretary Melvin Laird's life miserable with their protests. His aides concede that the dispute is becoming one of the most nettlesome they have encountered. Laird himself, normally outgoing and sensitive to Capitol Hill foibles, grimly refuses to discuss the touchy subject. It is fitting that an organization spending close to $80 billion a year should become discomfited over whether to continue paying the pipers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.