Did you know a Scotsman went into battle on D-Day armed with a bagpipe?

The British Army of World War II had its share of eccentrics, two of them being Bill Millin, and his commanding officer, Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat. On D-Day, Millin disembarked his landing craft armed with a traditional dirk dagger, wearing a kilt and playing a bagpipe.
 
Millin was born in Canada but grew up in Scotland from the age of 3 onward, and eventually joined the army as a piper. He volunteered for 1 Special Service Brigade, which consisted of commando troops and Royal Marines under the command of Lord Lovat.

The two men became friends, and Lord Lovat asked Millin to serve as his personal piper. The War Office forbade the playing of pipes in battle, but Lord Lovat waved that away saying "Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply." Thus, it came to be that Millin entered battle on D-Day playing his pipe. When he half-jokingly asked if he should walk up and down the beach while playing as is traditional, Lord Lovat replied “Oh, yes. That would be lovely.”

The commando force lost half of its strength, but Millin survived with only repairable shrapnel damage to his pipe. He continued to play as the troops pushed off the beaches and further inland. Two German snipers were later captured and admitted they only didn’t shoot the piper because they thought he was insane and suicidal.
 
The unit reached Pegasus Bridge (Read our earlier article), which had been captured by British gliders during the night, and was still contested by the Germans. As the Commandos marched across the bridge, they came under fire and lost 12 men, most of them shot through the berets they wore in lieu of helmets, prompting later units to put on helmets and rush across in small groups.

Bill Millin’s actions were portrayed in the 1962 film The Longest Day, where he was played by Pipe Major Leslie de Laspee, the official piper to the Queen Mother at the time. One of his pipes – not the one he used while crossing the bridge, but a later replacement he called a “campaign pipe” – is on display at the Pegasus Bridge Memorial in Normandy. Mr. MIllin passed away in 2010. A statue of him stands on Sword Beach. At its unveiling, 500 hundred pipers, led by Millin’s son, played the bagpipes.

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