The legacy of the Mad Piper who played bagpipes on D-Day beaches
Amid the roar of gunfire and the shouts and screams of soldiers as they ran up the beaches of Normandy, there was another sound: the keening cry of bagpipes.
The noise of war was everywhere. Explosions rent the air at every moment, the rattle of machine guns firing down at Allied troops rang out along 50 miles of coastline.
Bill Millin was just 21 years old when he stepped off his landing craft on D-Day, wearing his father’s First World War kilt and armed only with a ceremonial dagger.
Bill Millin plays his bagpipes at Edinburgh Castle in 2001. Pic: PA
In the hell of war, the trill of his bagpipes raised morale and was an echo of home for his comrades on that fateful day.
By some miracle – and perhaps the fact that German snipers would later say they avoided shooting him because they thought he had gone mad – Bill survived D-Day and his story became legend.
“The life I live is because of my grandfather’s generation,” his grandson Jacob Millin says.
Jacob Millin and his son
He plays bagpipes too, like his father and his grandfather before him.
“It makes you feel connected, like I’m doing something to keep the story going, keeping it alive,” he adds.
“It’s down to my generation and future generations to not let it fade.”
It may be a common sight in Scotland, where his grandfather hails from, but bagpipes are a bit more exotic in Norfolk, where Jacob lives with his family.
“Whenever you play, people do wander over because you don’t hear it very often. It’s quite an individual instrument and they’re so loud you can hear them from miles away.”
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It was against the rules to play the bagpipes on D-Day. Military bosses were worried about the level of casualties at the landings.
In 1944, Bill was the personal piper to the eccentric Lord Lovat, the commander of the newly formed 1st Special Service Brigade which landed at Sword beach on 6 June 1944. It was Lovat who asked him to play the pipes on the beach.
When Bill reminded him of the rules, the peer replied: “Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”
And so The Road To The Isles, a tune about the hills of Skye, rang out in France.
Piper Bill Millin at his home in Dawlish, Devon, with bagpipes (NOT the pipes he blew on the beach) in 2004. Pic: PA
Bill returned to Normandy for key commemorations and in 1994 was reunited with Josette Gouellain in the town of Ranville.
Fifty years earlier, Josette, 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.
In 1995, he played the lament at Lord Lovat’s funeral. Bill died in 2010.
In Jacob’s work as a teacher, he gets to pass on the stories of D-Day to his students so that a new generation can engage with what happened, even as the event passes out of living memory.
“For them, looking at old people, they might be a bit slower or not as quick, but actually some of the people they walk past in the streets were actual veterans who have seen active service or were involved in codebreaking,” he says.
“I can’t imagine when I was 21 being on the beach with people shooting and seeing my friends die in front of me.”
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This generation, he says, often don’t know what to do when they’re in their 20s.
“Being deployed on D-Day and having to carry that with you for the rest of your life, I think that’s a really important message of not giving up, being humble about things and doing what needs to be done.”
Jacob, who regularly tours playing his bagpipes at memorial events, says his young son has also taken up the bagpipes.
The legacy of the Mad Piper lives on.
UK
Mohamed al Fayed: Former royal security head says he warned Royal Family before Diana went on holiday with businessman
The former head of royal protection says he warned the Royal Family about Mohamed al Fayed’s reputation before Princess Diana took her sons on holiday with him.
The former Harrods owner, who died last year at the age of 94, was described as a “monster” earlier this week by lawyers representing 37 alleged sexual abuse victims.
The women say he raped and sexually assaulted them while they worked at the luxury department store, prowling the shop floor and “cherry-picking” women to be brought to his executive suite.
Now, Mr Davies says people were aware of the Egyptian businessman’s reputation as far back as the 1990s, and that he raised concerns about him to the Royal Family.
Princess Diana on the quay of the residence of Mohamed al Fayed in Saint Tropez on 20 July 1997. File pic: AP
“This was a man who I would be concerned [about] if a relative of mine was going on holiday with him, let alone the future king and his brother and their mother, Princess Diana,” Dai Davies told Sky News.
Mohamed al Fayed during a match at Craven Cottage stadium in 2013: File pic: PA
In July 1997, a month before she died, Princess Diana went on holiday with Fayed and his wife to their residence in St Tropez.
She took the two young princes with her – a holiday Prince Harry described as “heaven” in his 2023 memoir Spare.
“I was horrified because I was aware of some of the allegations even then that were going around,” said Mr Davies.
“I was aware that he had tried very hard to ingratiate himself with the Royal Family and obviously knowing, as I did, the reputation he was alleged [to have] then, I was concerned, and I took the opportunity to inform the Royal Family.”
Princess Diana, Prince William (right) and Prince Harry (left) in Saint Tropez on 14 July 1997. File pic: AP
Mr Davies says he was told: “Her Majesty is aware.”
“The rest is history,” he said.
Buckingham Palace told Sky News it had no comment on the allegations.
Fulham ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations
Fulham FC, a football club that was owned by Fayed between 1997 and 2013, has said it is “deeply troubled” by the dozens of “disturbing” sexual abuse allegations against the businessman.
The Premier League club also said it is “in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club is or has been affected” by this alleged behaviour.
Mohamed al Fayed waves a Fulham scarf in front of supporters in 2012. Pic: Reuters
However, Gaute Haugenes, who managed the club’s women’s team between 2001 and 2003, told the BBC extra precautions were taken to protect female players from Fayed.
“We were aware he liked young, blonde girls. So we just made sure that situations couldn’t occur. We protected the players.”
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‘The door was locked behind me’
A former Harrods employee told Sky News she was summoned to Fayed’s apartment when she began working for the department store at 19 years old.
She was told the meeting was a “job review” before “the door was locked behind me”.
“I saw his bedroom door partially open – there were sex toys on view,” she said.
“I felt petrified. I perched myself at the very end of the sofa and then… my boss, the person I worked for, pushed himself onto me.”
Read more: ‘One of the worst cases of corporate sexual exploitation’
Harrods said in a statement on Thursday it was “utterly appalled” by the allegations of abuse and apologised to Fayed’s alleged victims.
The department store has also set up a page on its website inviting former employees to come forward if they have allegations.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
The legal team involved in a civil claim against Harrods for allegedly failing to provide a safe system of work for its employees said they aimed to seek justice for the victims of a “vast web of abuse”.
Lily Allen says she had her children “for all the wrong reasons,” at a “high pressure” point in her career when she felt “overwhelmed”.
The singer and actress had her two daughters, Marnie, 12 and Ethel, 11, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper when she was in her mid-20s.
By the time she became a mum, she’d already had hit singles including Smile and The Fear, released two studio albums and received a Brit Award for best British female solo artist.
Speaking about motherhood on the BBC podcast Miss Me?, which Allen hosts with her long-time friend Miquita Oliver, she said: “I think I had children for all the wrong reasons, really.
“Because I was yearning for unconditional love, which I haven’t felt in my life since I was a child.”
The now 39-year-old star added: “And also, my career was at such high speed, high pressure, and I felt like very overwhelmed by what was happening. I just didn’t get much respite you know?
“And I felt like the only way to stop people hassling me was to say, ‘It’s not about me, actually this is about this other person that’s inside me’.
When asked by Oliver if it worked, Allen says: “Yeah, they did leave me alone. I don’t think I really understood what was happening, what I got myself into.”
The daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen, she went on to discuss her own childhood.
“My mum, bless her, had children really early as well, and she really struggled. But she doesn’t really talk about the struggle. And so… She inadvertently gaslit me into thinking it was, you know, easy.
“You just sort of throw the kid over your shoulder and you get on with it.
“Her job was very static, and in one place and went to an office and mine wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t easy. It just wasn’t easy.”
Allen is married to Stranger Things star David Harbour
The ‘nasty scars’ caused by absent parents
Allen previously told the Radio Times podcast that while she loves her children, having them “ruined her career”.
She said her decision to prioritise them over her pop career was a decision she made so as not to inflict the “nasty scars” of being an “absent” parent onto them.
She also said the myth of having it all “really annoyed” as it simply was not true.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Allen, whose younger brother is Game Of Thrones actor Alfie Allen, married Stranger Things star David Harbour in 2020.
Away from her music career, Allen has branched out into acting over the last few years, starring in two plays in London’s West End, and winning a role in Sky drama Dreamland last year.
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