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D-Day Hero and Museum Clash in Battle of Bagpipes

by
Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent
Submitted to The Capital Scot
by newmexicotartan@juno.com

Bill Millin, the "mad piper" who defied enemy fire to play on the beach during the D-Day landings, yesterday denied that he had misled a museum by presenting them with the wrong set of pipes.

The bagpipes that inspired the 1st Commando Brigade under Lord Lovat as they landed on Sword Beach in 1944 were put on show last year in the National War Museum in Scotland.

Mr Millin, 79, presented them last January http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/17/npipe17.xml after the death of his wife Margaret, who came from Edinburgh and urged him to donate the items to the city. But the museum later contacted him to say it had received "convincing evidence" that the real pipes were on display in Normandy.

As a result, Alan Carswell, the curator, decided he could no longer use the pipes as the centrepiece of a Second World War exhibition.

Mr Millin, who lives in Dawlish, Devon, but is originally from Fort William, has taken back his pipes but said he was not angry about what he called "a mix-up".

He said that he had also given a set of pipes to the Pegasus Memorial Museum at Ranville, which were not the pipes he used on the beach, but a set he played later in the campaign.

"Mr Carswell may be the expert but he has got it wrong on this occasion. He is entitled to his opinion but he has lost out on a piece of history," said Mr Millin.

"The pipes I gave to the museum in Scotland are the D-Day pipes and the ones I gave to the museum in France are what I have called the Normandy pipes."

Mr Millin was 21, and the personal piper to Lord Lovat, when he was ordered to ignore Army rules banning the playing of pipes in battle. German prisoners said later that they called him the "mad piper" and that their snipers had ignored him.

Mr Millin said: "Afterwards Lord Lovat said I was going to be the greatest hero in the history of warfare. He said to me, 'You were a true Scotsman when you led the greatest invasion in history'."

Mr Millin said the pipes might now end up in a "small museum in the north of Scotland".

Mr Carswell added: "We were contacted by representatives of the Pegasus Memorial Museum, who provided convincing evidence to show they have the set of pipes which Mr Millin played on that day."

See: telegraph.co.uk, 17 January 2001: D-Day Piper Gives Bagpipes to Nation at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/17/npipe17.xml

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