HERO PIPER WHO LED D-DAY TROOPS INTO BATTLE DIES AGED 88 Bill Millin playing his pipes in recent years Thursday August 19,2010

A PIPER who became a D-Day legend by leading troops ashore under heavy fire died yesterday aged 88.

    Commando Bill Millin went into battle on Sword Beach on June 6, 1944 playing Hielan’ Laddie – and he kept playing until 1 Special ­Service Brigade had linked up with para­troopers holding Pegasus Bridge .

    The unarmed 21-year-old played while men fell dead around him, defying the threat of snipers, mortars and machine guns.

    He is thought to have survived because the Germans thought he was mad.

    Glasgow-born Bill went ashore alongside his charismatic commander Lord Lovat, who had defied a ban on taking pipers into battle.

    He later told how, when they had waded on to the beach, Lord Lovat asked him to play a tune. He said: “When I looked round – the noise and people lying about shouting and the smoke, the crump of mortars – I said to myself: ‘You must be joking, surely.’ “He said: ‘What was that? Would you mind giving us a tune?’”Bill asked Lord Lovat: “Would you want me to walk up and down, sir?” He was told: “Yes. That would be nice. Yes, walk up and down.”

    Half the men in his brigade were killed or wounded but Bill came through with hardly a scratch.

He said: “I can’t understand it, although many people write telling me it was a religious kind of thing and that God was protecting me.

    “I can’t remember feeling scared at the time – I think the excitement was too much. It was only later that I felt afraid. It was madness, really. I was such an easy target and why I was never hit I do not know.”

    Bill’s bravery won him the French Croix d’Honneur and two other gallantry decorations. He was also immortalised in the 1962 film about D-Day, The Longest Day.