During D-Day , as the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy they were met with machine gun
fire, and anything the Germans could throw at them to repel their advances.
The allied forces were armed with guns, bazookas, and incredibly deadly weapons but there was
one man who stormed the beaches armed with a musical instrument, his trusty bagpipes.
William Millin, or Bill Millin was the personal piper of Simon Fraser the 15th Lord Lovat,
and he’s best remembered for playing his pipes under intense fire during the D-day
landings.
However, it was said that when the Germans saw him, they did not fire at him as they
thought he was crazy.
Join us today as we look at the ‘Amazing story of the Piper of Pegasus Bridge.’
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Bill Millin was born in Canada on the 14th July 1922.
His father was from Scotland and he had moved to Canada.
The family then moved back to Scotland when his father worked as a policeman when Bill
was 3, and he went to a school in the Shettleston area of Glasgow.
Whilst in Scotland, he joined the Territorial Army in Fort William, after his family moved
yet again and whilst here he learned how to play the bagpipes.
He played in a pipe band of the Highland Light Infantry and also in the Queens own Cameron
Highlanders.
But he then volunteered to train as a commando, and in this he began to train with Lord Lovat
in Scotland, with troops of other nationalities.
On the 6th June, Millin was there ready and waiting to land on the Normandy Beaches, and
he wrote of his day on the day that would change History forever D’Day.
He said, ‘I went along to the Hamble River aboard the landing craft with 21 others, and
we went in the leading one and I had the Pipes in the box.
I had been playing to the troops waiting to go aboard the craft, and then I put them in
the box and Lord Lovat said, ‘you better get them out of the box again, because once
we set sail by 9:30 or 9 o clock, you can play us out the Solent.
You will be in the landing craft with me.’
Millen knew he had to pipe the forces onto the Normandy beaches.
He played leaving England, and as the landing craft gathered in the Solent you could hear
his bagpipes.
After they the Solent they were out at sea, it was cramped in his landing craft, and despite
many being violently sick Millin was fine.
As they readied, the men packed their rucksacks and put them on, and picked up their rifles
but Millin grabbed his pipes.
Everyone was behaving normally he said, and he said ‘I didn’t think of being shot,
how many Germans were there, what was there, whether the smell of feeling the seasickness
was still on me.
We all got up on deck, then the order came to get ashore.
I was very pleased to get ashore as no-one was shouting that they were afraid, all people
really wanted to get off.
Lord Lovat was in the next ramp, and there were two ramps at the front of the landing
craft.
Lovat jumped into the Water, and then Millin waited until he got in and then someone came
up on the empty ramp and he was immediately shot.
Bill jumped in very quickly then after, and his Kilt floated to the surface.
Rousing himself out of the water, he then began to play his pipes.
He said, ‘I struck up the pipes and paddled through the surf playing Hieland Laddie and
Lovat turned around and looked at me.
Lovat asked for another tune.
When I looked around, the noise and people lying about, shouting and there smoke, the
crump of mortars.
I said to myself, You must be joking.
Lovat requested to play The Road to the Isles and walking up and down the beach Millin played.
He said ‘Just a few feet up on the beach I walked along, I could see people lying face
down int he water going forwards and back in the surf.
Others were trying to dig in just off the beach.
When they heard the pipes some of them stopped, one came along and he called me the mad bastard.
Millin was just 21 whilst he was doing this, and he continued to play as his comrades fell
around him at Sword beach.
As the Allies pushed forward, they were walking in formation and Bill continued playing.
He was piping along the road and despite being vulnerable to enemy fire he continued.
The group were then attacked by snipers.
He said ‘I could see this sniper about a 100 yards or so away ahead of me, I glanced
round and stopped playing, and they were all down the road and their faces in the road.
Even Lovat was on one knee.
Then the next thing this man comes scrambling down the tree and Lovat and our group dashed
forward.
I stopped playing by this time.
The mans head bobbing about, the snipers head was bobbing about in a cornfield, and love
shot at him and he fell down.
Lovat had killed him, then he said to me ‘Right Piper, start the pipes again.’
He continued to say, ‘I was piping blue bonnets over the border at that time, then
a shell hit the church on the left and we all stopped.
I looked around and the commandos were throwing grenades in through the windows of the houses.
I stopped there at the end of the village and Lovat came up to me and said ‘Well we
are almost at the bridges, about another half a mile.
So start your pipes here and continue along the road, and then swing round to your left,
then its a straight road down the bridges.’
I started piping, but became conscious of snipers by this time.
I could see the bridges about 200 years down there road and a pall of black smoke over
the bridges.
I kept piping down the road, Lovat was behind me and when I came to the bridges, I stopped
across the road from a cafe.
Then Lovat came to me and said, ‘Right piper we are crossing over.
So I start walking, put the pipes up.
We can hear the shrapnel hitting the sides of the bridge.
Bill Millin continued to play across the bridge, and he played as the commandos marched across
Pegasus Bridge, one of the important points that the allies had taken.
He said, ‘it was the longest bridge I ever piped across, but I got safely over and shook
hands with two airborne chaps in a trench.
Then Lovat got across and said ‘We are pleased to see you old boy, sorry we are two and a
half minutes late.’
As the Allied soldiers had advanced from Sword Beach to Pegasus bridge, Bill Millin played
his pipes in an iconic image.
He had been armed with nothing except his pipes and his black knife sheathed inside
his kilt hose.
Whilst men fell around him, including 12 on Pegasus Bridge as the commandos marched across,
Millin continued to play.
Captured Germans Snipers would later tell of the bizarre sight of Millin walking across
a battlefield playing his pipes, and when asked why they didn’t fire at him, they
replied with they thought he was mad or crazy.
Millin continued to see action in the Netherlands following the D-Day landings, and also in
Germany as the war came to an end but he was demobilised in 1946 and he then worked on
Lovat’s highland estate.
He later became a psychiatric nurse in Glasgow, but donated his D-Day bagpipes to the Dawlish
Museum.
Bill Millin is remembered today and is commemorated as the Piper of Pegasus Bridge.
Imagine you are landing one of the D-Day beaches, and you hear a piper pushing you on to battle,
whilst bullets and mortar fire are crashing all around you.
He was an incredibly brave man, and a man who followed the orders of Lord Lovat.
The story of the Piper of Pegasus Bridge is an amazing one, and one that should be remembered
for centuries to come.
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