Warning: Bag Pipe Content
Bill Millin is best remembered for playing the pipes whilst under fire during the
D-Day landing in Normandy.
[4] Pipers had traditionally been used in battle by Scottish and Irish soldiers.
[5] However, the use of
bagpipes was restricted to rear areas by the time of the Second World War by the British Army. Lovat, nevertheless, ignored these orders and ordered Millin, then aged 21, to play. When Private Millin demurred, citing the regulations, he recalled later, Lord Lovat replied: "Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply." He played "
Highland Laddie" "
The Road to the Isles" and "All the blue bonnets are over the border" as his comrades fell around him on
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[1] Millin states that he later talked to captured German snipers who claimed they did not shoot at him because they thought he had gone mad.
[6]
Millin, whom Lovat had appointed his personal piper during commando training at
Achnacarry, near
Fort William in Scotland, was the only man during the landing who wore a
kilt – it was the same
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World War I – and he was armed only with his pipes and the
sgian-dubh, or "black knife", sheathed inside his kilt-hose on the right side.
[2] In keeping with Scottish tradition, he wore no underwear beneath the kilt. He later told author
Peter Caddick-Adams that the coldness of the water took his breath away.
[7]
Lovat and Millin advanced from Sword to
Pegasus Bridge, which had been defiantly defended by men of the 2nd Bn the
Ox & Bucks Light Infantry (
6th Airborne Division) who had landed in the early hours by glider. Lovat's commandos arrived at a little past one p.m. at Pegasus Bridge although the rendezvous time in the plan was noon. To the sound of Millin's bagpipes, the commandos marched across Pegasus Bridge. During the march, twelve men died, most shot through their berets.
[8] Later detachments of the commandos rushed across in small groups with helmets on. Millin's D-Day bagpipes were later donated to Dawlish Museum. A set of pipes he used later in the campaign, after the originals became damaged, were donated to the now "Pegasus Bridge Museum".
[9][10]
