William "Bill" Millin

THE courageous soldier who piped his comrades ashore during the D-Day landings has died aged 88.
Bill Millin was ordered to keep playing his bagpipes to boost morale as fellow soldiers were killed around him.
His actions were later immortalised in the film The Longest Day.
Widower Mr Millin, a Scot, lived in Devon for 45 years. He moved to a nursing home in Dawlish after suffering a major stroke seven years ago.
His family released a brief statement: "This morning, following a short illness, piper Bill Millin, a great Scottish hero, passed peacefully away in Torbay Hospital."
Mr Millin was serving with 1st Commando Brigade when he landed at Sword Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944.
His commanding officer, Lord Lovat, asked him to ignore instructions banning the playing of bagpipes in battle and requested he play to rally his comrades.
Mr Millin marched up and down the shore in his kilt piping Highland Laddie. He continued to play as his friends fell around him and later moved inland to pipe the troops across Pegasus Bridge, playing Blue Bonnets Over the Border.
He later said: `"Lord Lovat said this was going to be the greatest invasion in the history of warfare and he wanted the bagpipes leading it. He said I was to play and he would worry about the consequences later.
"As they (his fellow soldiers) moved off I found myself left on my own. No one told me to stop playing, so I had to run after them and catch them up."
His bagpipes were finally silenced four days later by a piece of shrapnel.
They were handed over to the National War Museum of Scotland in 2001, along with his kilt, commando beret and knife.
In 2006, when a song was written in his honour by folk singer Sheelagh Allen, Mr Millin said: "I enjoyed playing the pipes, but I didn't notice I was being shot at. When you're young you do things you wouldn't dream of doing when you're older."
During the past 66 years, Mr Millin, a grandfather, returned to France on many occasions to pay his respects to his fallen comrades.
The French recognised his courage by awarding him their Croix d'Honneur and two other gallantry decorations. They also plan to erect a statue of him.
Ken Sturdy, chairman of the Torbay Normandy Veterans' Association, said: "Bill's pipes were his weapons. He was part of that romantic history of old warfare which had gone back to the Middle Ages where trumpets and drums were played."
Lord Lovat was one of the most colourful figures of the war, a hereditary chief of the clan Fraser who became a brilliant military commander.
A brigadier on D-Day, he led his Special Service brigade on to the beaches and through some of the fiercest fighting in the wake of D-Day before being seriously wounded six days later.
When he died in 1994, Mr Millin played at his funeral.
In the late 1950s, Mr Millin trained in Glasgow as a registered mental health nurse and worked in three hospitals in the city. He later moved to Devon and was employed at Langdon Hospital, Dawlish.
Bill Millin married Margaret Mary Dowdel in 1954. She predeceased him and he is survived by their son.