Sergeant George Frederick Findlater VC was a Scottish soldier in the British Army, who was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry, for his role in the Tirah Campaign. On 20 October 1897, Findlater, then a junior piper in the Gordon Highlanders, was shot in the ankles during an advance against opposing defences at the Battle of the Dargai Heights; unable to walk, and exposed to enemy fire, he continued playing, to encourage the battalion's advance. The event was widely covered in the press, making Findlater a public hero.

The Tirah campaign, often referred to in contemporary British accounts as the Tirah expedition, was an Indian frontier campaign from September 1897 to April 1898. Tirah is a mountainous tract of country in what was formerly known as Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.