The band played on

Since ancient times, musicians have played a part in military conflict. As war rages in the Gulf, Michael Church hears how our bandsmen could have a role after the fighting stops

When Corporal Jay Smith's voice came crackling down the line, he told me about the field hospital he'd just finished building in Kuwait. Sweaty work, and not why he joined the army: "I'm a professional trumpeter. After university I wanted a career in music where I could travel round the world, and as I didn't want to play on luxury liners, becoming a military musician was the alternative." As a member of the Scots regiments' Highland Band, he's now fulfilling the non-musical side of his contract. During the long lull between 1945 and the first Gulf war, Army musicians had it cushy, but now they've reverted to their dual role, as musicians who are also gun-carrying medics. Speaking on the eve of combat, he was unequivocally upbeat: "I love this life. It was made clear when I joined, that this was part of the job. And yes, I can dress a wound."

Warriors have always been piped into battle. Romans and medieval Europeans did it with trumpets and drums, and then, courtesy of the Ottoman Turks, came the blood-curdling sound of the oboe and the percussive tinkle of the Jingling Johnny. The regimental band, proudly attired in flamboyant lattices of martial braid, was an integral part of the battlefield forces on each side of the Napoleonic Wars. By the start of the 20th century, with Sousa's marches echoing through the United States, wind and percussion had everywhere become the accompaniment to war – though, distinctively, the Scottish regiments were still led into battle by the pipes and drums.

When hostilities broke out in 1914, Britain's War Office dispersed its bands and sent the musicians back to their regiments as stretcher-bearers, but after a couple of months it realised its mistake and reconstituted the bands forthwith. As Kipling observed: "No one can say for certain where the soul of the battalion lives, but the expression of that soul is most often found in the band. A wise and sympathetic bandmaster can lift a battalion out of depression, cheer it up in sickness, and steady and recall it to itself in times of almost unendurable stress." This perfectly sums up the philosophy I hear from the top brass of the Corps of Army Music at Kneller Hall in Twickenham.

For Colonel Tony Potter and Lieutenant-Colonel Geoff Kingston – both sad and thoughtful, having just waved goodbye to their own soldier sons – the reality can't be too strongly stressed: Army bandsmen are musicians second, and soldiers first. Potter showed me photographs of his men in action: Welsh Guards serenading a ruined Bosnian street, a Gurkha bandsman playing the trombone to children in Kabul with a rifle strapped across his back. Then photographs without instruments: bandsmen running dressing stations and carrying stretchers. Then an engraving from the First World War: Bandsman Rendle, awarded the Victoria Cross for heroism under fire. This career, which also involves driving Green Goddesses during fire strikes, is no soft option: bandsmen have been killed in Kosovo, and even by the IRA in Hyde Park. There were no musicians to interview at Kneller Hall, because they're now all medics in the Gulf.

"There was some discussion," said Potter, "as to whether or not they should wear Red Cross arm-bands, and they probably are doing so now, because even medics are soldiers first and foremost. But I was adamant that all bands would deploy with their musical instruments, because we can add to the moral component of the Army's fighting power. Once the fighting is over, and the casualties have been moved on, they can either raise the morale of their own soldiers, or go into work with the local population, winning hearts and minds." That's the theory based on past experience, but one does wonder how it will stand up in Iraq.

Kneller Hall – built by Sir Christopher Wren – became the Army's musical headquarters as a result of a sticky little moment in the Crimean War, where the bandsmen had been drafted as stretcher-bearers while their civilian bandmasters stayed at home. When the massed bands in Scutari struck up the national anthem to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday, they did so in many different arrangements, and in a wide variety of keys. So shocked was the music-loving Duke of Cambridge – the most senior royal present – that he resolved to bring all regimental bands under War Office control, with Kneller Hall as its centre. And there, Britain's military-musical tradition was knocked into shape.

On the Continent, military music had long been professionalised, with arrangements for wind and percussion being the commonest means by which ordinary people encountered the music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven: bandstands were the Classic FM of their day. Now Britain joined the club, with composers of Arthur Sullivan's calibre – his father was a bandmaster – writing expressly for the Army. The result is a rich tradition, ranging from the Austro-German classics, via Dvorak and Glenn Miller, to some of the most avant-garde composers of our time. As Jay Smith put it: "We're a 35-piece wind band, but within that we can provide a pop group, a folk group, a ceilidh band, even a disco. We can provide musical coverage for any event."

And that's the other side of the coin, because the bands' peacetime work involves much more than royal birthdays. When the Coldstream Guards band played "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the forecourt at Buckingham Palace in the wake of the September 11 attacks, New York's response was to invite them on an American tour.

Much of the bands' peacetime work is done for charity, and some as a means of raising cash. Like Russia's Red Army Ensemble, they are concert stars in their own right, and many of them make CDs. The musical quality of some of these may be a bit ropey, but the records now being issued on the SRC label – collections of Sullivan, Walton, and Bliss – are first-rate by any standards.

It comes as a surprise – though, really, it shouldn't – to find that the independent opera promoter Raymond Gubbay advises Kneller Hall on its commercial activities. "I've been using these bands for years for things like the grand march in Aida," he says. "So it's nice to be putting something back." He recently threw a backstage party for Army musicians at the opening night of his Albert Hall Madam Butterfly: a graceful gesture, given that things had suddenly got serious.

As Potter points out, these bands are much sought after as soldiers. "Field hospitals are delighted to get a band, because they come as a close-knit unit with their command structure already intact. They're very intelligent, and very flexible. They're ideal for looking after the huge generators which field hospitals now depend on. They can drive heavy goods vehicles, and they know about working with hazardous chemicals, because they've had that training. And they're equipped and ready for combat, if that becomes necessary."