The Scottish Brass Band Championships take place in Dundee this weekend. One of the most hotly-contested competitions will be the cornet category, where the winner takes the prestigious Terris Medal. The medal is named after Jim Terris, whose cornet delighted both allied and German troops in the trenches during the first world war, and who continued to play even after losing a lung during the Battle of the Somme. Jack McKeown spoke to Jim’s grand-nephew Colin Terris, who will hand out the medal at the awards ceremony on Sunday.

Modern warfare is far from bloodless, but it’s nothing compared to the brutality of the first world war. Iraq, considered by most right-thinking people to be one of the most disastrous wars in modern history, has cost around 3300 British and American servicemen’s lives. In the Great War, more than a million British Empire and American soldiers died. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British Army alone lost almost 20,000 men.

Some of the bravest men to serve in the war were the stretcher bearers, and one of their number was called Jim Terris. Born in the Fife village of Kelty in 1895, Jim joined the Argyll and Southern Highlanders at the age of 16 and served until 1917, when he was discharged as unfit for service due to the wounds he received in battle. By that time he had won the military medal for distinguished service.

The bandmaster in his regiment, Jim was a highly accomplished cornet player and according to his contemporaries a buoyant personality who boosted the morale of everyone around him. By the age of 12, he was playing at a very high senior level and was regarded as a remarkable talent in brass band circles.

Jim saw action in Armentieres and Ypres and was wounded at the Battle of the Somme.

Conditions in the trenches were horrendous and soldiers knew that every moment might be their last. As well as the fear of death from enemy shells, life was made a constant misery by the cramped, cold and filthy environment the soldiers had to endure.

Weeks and months of exposure to wetness and mud caused the feet to rot, a condition that became known as trench foot. Dysentery was rife, typhoid and respiratory diseases were common and hypothermia during the winter was also a common occurrence.

Yet Jim appeared to be a character who could lift the spirits of those around him. He carried his cornet everywhere he went, and would play long into the night.

Listening to him play took his comrades away from their wretched, near-unbearable conditions and, amazingly, when he finished playing cheers of appreciation would sometimes be heard drifting across from the enemy lines.

Jim’s superior, Major J. G. Chandler, who fought beside him, rated the young Kelty cornet player very highly. Writing in his diary, he said, “Frequently the beautiful cornet playing of Little Terris cheered us all up—and I heard the Germans cheer his playing from their trenches.”

On the evening of March 2, 1915, he wrote, “This evening I heard the Germans shouting and cheering from the trenches at the sound of a cornet being played.

“There were endless ripples of intense red over the background of the green sky. Little Terris was playing his cornet . . . and the Bosch cheered and cried ‘bravo!’ ”

Unlike the famous Christmas Truce of 1914, where Allied and German soldiers played football in no man’s land, while the Germans seemed to appreciate Jim’s playing it did not stop them setting about their goal of slaughtering him and his friends—as they began to shell Jim’s trench just moments after his last note ceased.

“And a few yards to his right where the next battalion’s trenches were, six men were killed.” Major Chandler continues in his diary.

“Six men were killed just a few yards from us. It’s a mixture of merriness and grimness where the contemplation of the sunset is interrupted by the flight of bullets, where a merry party may be blown into the heavens or hells at any moment.”

As a stretcher bearer, Jim had one of the most dangerous jobs in the army and this fact did not go unnoticed by Major Chandler.

“There is no finer body of men in the whole army than the regimental stretcher bearers,” he wrote. “They deserve a whole chapter from a better pen than mine.

“They charge unarmed with the other men and their work is always done under fire. I have never heard a stretcher bearer grousing.”

The hazardous nature of his post finally caught up with Jim when a mortar shell exploded at the Battle of the Somme and he received a hideous wound in his chest.

He was returned to Scotland and spent time recovering in Craigleith Hospital. One of his lungs was so badly damaged that it had to be removed and in 1917 Jim was honourably discharged from the army, having won the Military Medal for his bravery.

Major Chandler’s diary, accounting the beauty and death he saw during that sunset evening in 1915 is in the keeping of Jim’s grand nephew Colin Terris.

Colin, 68, also has the cornet that Jim blew on those long ago battlefields. “One of the most poignant moments of my life was when my own son Gordon played that cornet in front of the War Memorial in Kelty, where Jim Terris was from.”

The Springfield resident has kept a large collection of first world war memorabilia relating to his great uncle. “Everybody in my family talked about Jim when I was a child. He was a real hero within the family and the local community.”

Locally, Jim Terris was as famous for his exploits after the war as during it. Despite the loss of a lung, he managed to train himself to such a degree that he was able to continue playing the cornet.

Not only did he continue to play, he competed at the highest level in Scotland. In June 1917, he won first prize in the Whitburn Solo Contest. His reward was two silver vases.

In the years after the Great War, there was hardly a war memorial in Scotland that was opened without Jim playing accompaniment. Despite his remarkable abilities, complications arising from his wounds caused his early death in 1931 at the age of just 36.

He was survived by his father, Colin Terris, himself a fine musician, and his death was reported on the front page of the People’s Journal.

“We’ve always been a musical family,” says Colin, who himself plays banjo and is in a jazz band. “My great great grandfather James started the Kelty Band in the late 1800s and it is still going today.”

The Terris Medal will be handed out on Sunday at the Scottish Brass Band Championships, which take place at the Caird Hall. The cornet blown by Jim Terris on the battlefields of Europe and the two silver vases he won after the war will be on display.