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D-Day's 'Mad Piper' Bill Millin Dies Aged 88 |
 Bill Millin, 88,
died after a short illness in a nursing home in Devon where he lived after
suffering a stroke several years ago, his family said.
Mr Millin was
immortalised in the film The Longest Day.
Nicknamed the Mad
Piper, he braved German bullets and bombs as he played his comrades ashore on
Sword Beach during the D-Day Normandy
landings on June 6, 1944 - the
Allied invasion which led to the liberation of Europe from Nazi
rule.
Military bosses had
ordered pipers not to play because of fears over the level of casualties at the
landings.
But that decision was
ignored by 1st Commando Brigade commander Lord Lovat.
He told Mr Millin, then
21 years old, to play away and so troops were led ashore to the sound of
Highland Laddie, Blue Bonnets Over The Border and Road to the Isles.
However, the pipes were
silenced four days later by a shard of shrapnel.
Mr Millin - a
celebrated hero in France - was the only soldier wearing a kilt, which had also
been worn by his father in the trenches during the First World War.
 It is said that his
actions amused the Germans and some claimed they did not shoot him because they
thought he was mad.
Mr Millin recalled that
many Allied troops told him they had been inspired by his courageous antics,
although others were annoyed - one soldier on Sword Beach told him he was a "mad
bastard".
Later in the campaign
Mr Millin famously ignored sniper fire as he and Lovat crossed Pegasus Bridge
over the Caen Canal near Benouville, which had been taken by glider-borne
paratroopers.
Securing the bridge was
a key objective in the fight to break the initial German resistance and
establish a foothold in Occupied France.
Mr Millin returned to
Normanday for key commemorations and in 1994 he was reunited with Josette
Gouellain in the town of Ranville.
Fifty years ealier Ms
Gouellain, then a little girl, had asked him to play her a tune and he obliged
with The Nut Brown Maiden in reference to the colour of her hair and
eyes.
The following year he
played the lament at Lord Lovat's funeral.
A statue of Mr Millin
is due to be unveiled at Colleville-Montgomery, near the site of Sword Beach,
next year.
More about Bill http://www.pegasusarchive.org/normandy/bill_millin.htm
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