Walter Cuthbert Blythe was Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe's third child. Joyce (†) and Jem were older. Nan, Di, Shirley, and Rilla were younger. Walter was named after Anne's father, Walter Shirley, and the family who took Anne in after being orphaned, the Cuthbert family.
He was known as "Sissy Walter" and "Miss Walter" because he wrote "poetry trash" - as Susan Baker termed it - and was afraid of blood. Only once did he fight - when Dan Reese called Faith Meredith "pig-girl" and "rooster-girl", declared Anne wrote "trash" and called Walter a "coward". Walter was enraged. The next day, he fought Dan for Faith's sake and won, making him take back all his statements.
When the war broke out, he was afraid to go to war, which he confided only to Rilla, though he later did enlist. He was the only one of the Blythe and Meredith children, other than Joyce, to die. When Jack Elliott told them war had broke out, Walter said to Mary Vance:
"Before this war is over," he said—or something said through his lips—"every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it—you, Mary, will feel it—feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of blood over it. The Piper has come—and he will pipe until every corner of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be years before the dance of death is over—years, Mary. And in those years millions of hearts will break."
(From Rilla of Ingleside, Chapter 4: The Piper Pipes)
Walter's "famous poem, 'The Piper' ", was later actually written by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
"THE PIPER"
One day the piper came down the Glen..
Long and low and sweet played he
The children followed from door to door,
No matter how those who loved might implore
So willing the song of his melody
The song of a woodland rill
Someday the piper will come again
To pipe the sons of the maple tree
You and I will follow him from door to door
Many of us will come back no more
What matter that if Freedom still
Be the crown of each native hill?