Article credited to the Pegasus Archive
Bill Millin was the Piper of the 1st Special Service Brigade, and was amongst the more noticeable men to land on the Normandy Beaches on the 6th June as he played the Brigade ashore with his bagpipes. The following is his personal account of D-Day.
I went along to the Hamble River, aboard the landing craft with twenty-one 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 back in the box and Lord Lovat said “you better get them out of the box again because once we set sail by nine thirty or nine o’clock, you can play us out of the Solent. We will be in line astern. You will be in the leading craft with me”, so that was the start of it then. He never mentioned what to do. He realised that I knew what to do. I had to pipe ashore in the water up onto the beach and then later he would tell me when to play.