Body Bag Piper

Remember in The Longest Day, when there’s a bagpiper in the middle of the chaos on Sword Beach on D-Day getting mocked by Sean Connery? That walking target was based on Bill Millin, who has died of a stroke at the age of 88. On June 6, 1944, Millin was approached by his brigade’s commanding officer, Brig. Simon Fraser (aka Lord Lovat), who was one of Scotland’s most celebrated aristocrats. Against orders dating from World War I that forbade playing bagpipes on the battlefield because of the high risk of attracting enemy fire, Lord Lovat asked Private Millin to play on the beachhead to raise morale. Millin cited regulations, but Fraser told him “Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.” Whereas I would have shot at him just to stop that ungodly noise, the Germans didn’t shoot because they thought he was crazy while the British troops never forgot the inspiration they drew from the pipes that day. Hard to believe they got their asses