Bill Millin, bagpiper who accompanied British troops on D-Day, dies at 88
By T. Rees Shapiro
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Bill Millin, 88, a Scottish bagpiper who braved mortar shells, raking machine guns and sniper fire to play morale-pumping tunes for his fellow commandos from the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, died Aug. 17 at a hospital in the English county of Devon after a stroke.
Mr. Millin became part of Scottish folklore as soon as he jumped from the landing craft into the cold French waters off Sword Beach on June, 6, 1944, in Operation Overlord. He later came to be known as the "mad piper." His courageous actions were immortalized in the 1962 film adaptation of Cornelius Ryan's historical account of the invasion, "The Longest Day," which featured an ensemble cast including John Wayne and Sean Connery.
Dressed in the kilt his father wore in World War I and armed with only a ceremonial dagger, Mr. Millin was a 21-year-old soldier attached to the 1st Special Service Brigade led by Simon Fraser, better known by his Scottish clan title, Lord Lovat.
As Lovat's personal piper, Mr. Millin played rousing renditions of "Highland Laddie" and "Road to the Isles," energizing the advancing troops and comforting the men whose last moments were spent on foreign soil.
"I shall never forget the skirl of Bill Millin's pipes," one Normandy survivor, Tom Duncan, later told the London Daily Telegraph. "It reminded us of home and why we were fighting for our lives and those of our loved ones."
Despite the racket going on around him, Mr. Millin's music was heard up and down the coastline. It was so loud, in fact, that one soldier told him to knock it off unless he wanted all the Germans in France to hear of the invasion.
Mr. Millin was the only bagpiper to take part in Overlord, because British high command had banned pipers from the front to reduce casualties.
"Ah, but that's the English war office," Lovat told Mr. Millin. "You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn't apply."
Marching along the crater-pocked sand was oddly a "relief," Mr. Millin later said, compared with the boat ride to the shore, which had made him seasick.
Despite his brigade's heavy casualties -- nearly half of the 1,400 commandos were killed -- Mr. Millin survived without a scratch. (His pipes, however, were wounded by shrapnel after a mortar round landed beside him. Luckily, it was a superficial injury, and Mr. Millin patched his pipes up and carried on.)
Mr. Millin's unit eventually captured two German snipers whose pinpoint fire had wiped out many in the Allies' advance. When asked through an interpreter why the snipers hadn't aimed for Mr. Millin, whose blaring bagpipes would have made him an easy target, the prisoners had a simple answer.
The German snipers didn't bother, they said, because the man making all that noise seemed to be on a suicide mission and was clearly mad...
washingtonpost.com
That’s Bill Millin at 21, landing at Normandy on D-Day with his bagpipe, kit and kilt — armed only with a ceremonial dagger.
On D-Day.
Yes, what the hell?
Amid all this chaos, the unit’s commander brings his personal piper to play “Highland Laddie” and “Road to the Isles” to the troops.
It made no sense.
The Germans should have picked him off in 5 seconds...
...It’s a wonderful story that came to its inevitable conclusion this week. Bill Millin died on Tuesday at age 88.
It takes a pair of bronze ones to march, head high, music blaring into battle armed with only a commemorative dagger.
Scottish? He was actually born in Canada — Regina, Saskatchewan — to Scottish parents who later returned to Glasgow (taking him with them, of course).
He’s in heaven, playing, “Amazing Grace.”
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