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BACK TO WORK – BILL MILLIN AND D-DAY

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(Re-posted from WhidbeyIslandBaking.com)
Bill Millin plays bagpipes for soldiers, 1944
Bill Millin plays his pipes for fellow soldiers in 1944.

This past summer got BUSY … and interesting!  As many of you know I had a few adventures as a professional SCUBA diver, working at various locations around western Washington.  While it was great to get back in the water and blow bubbles, it also required me to shift my priorities.  Big among those priorities was the completion of my second book.  As many of you ALSO know this project is a Highland bagpipe sheet music & tune history book I am writing as a fundraiser for a veteran’s organization I am a member of.  There are a few chunky tasks remaining before publication.  The most challenging of these is writing about Bill Millin, a bagpiper who played on D-Day.

The legend of Bill Millin is well-known in the Highland bagpipe community.  The short story that everyone knows is that “Piper Bill” went ashore on Sword Beach* — he carried no firearm, wore a kilt, played bagpipes, and never got shot by German forces because they thought he had gone insane.  While all of this is true and I already knew from lore, I have been formally researching the whole story and it is far more detailed.
(*Queen Red, the furthest east section of the invasion)

Bill Millin, Highland bagpipes, landing, Queen Red, Sword Beach.
Bill Millin with his bagpipes landing on the Queen Red section of Sword Beach.

It is an honor to be writing about this man’s role in the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion and it is important to me that I get it right.  I have reached out for every information source I can locate.  Presently I have a considerable stack of library books on D-Day, audiobooks and e-books, media on order, one film, along with articles and interviews I’ve found online.  Something I am particularly excited about is that I have made contact with Bill Millin’s son and grandson online and they have agreed to review my work once complete.  Also, it seems that each time I stop by the library to pick up another piece of media I’ve ordered, I find and buy a D-Day or WWII book from their used book rack.  Apparently I’m building my own D-Day/WWII library $3 at a time!

The bronze life-size statue of Piper Bill Millin unveiled on 8 June 2013 at Colleville-Montgomery, near Sword, in France.

As I review these history sources I have found some problems in the information.  Generally speaking I have books written by historians and articles written by journalists.  Some of the errors I have identified due to my Highland bagpipe playing career.  Some of the errors seem to be words and concepts the previous writers did not fully understand.  The biggest problem I have been finding is historical inconsistencies.  Generally the greater collection of errors come from the journalists — these individuals tend to work at a faster pace with less study than historians.  Usually I can sift through the historical inconsistencies by applying information from military documents along with identifying the details that are consistent in history books and interviews from Bill Millin himself.

As said it is an honor to be writing about this man.  It is an honor as a bagpiper and as the grandson of WWII veterans.  My aim is to help clean up some of the history mistakes that have developed and promote the greater story of Bill Millin’s role in D-Day among my piping peers along with my non-piping readers.  I am sure that you too will be impressed by this one aspect of The Greatest Generation and the greatest invasion in the history of the world.

Books and Other Media

  • The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day by Cornelius Ryan – This is the seminal D-Day history book behind the film.  I am presently about half way through it and it is nothing short of AMAZING!  The cast-of-thousands film by Darryl F. Zanuck is really only a brief representation of the book although still well worth viewing.
  • D-Day / June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of WWII by Stephen E. Ambrose – To his great credit Mr. Ambrose seems to be making a good portion of his career on D-Day/WWII books, and to our benefit!  I have listened to his Pegasus Bridge book, largely built using interviews, and found it invaluable.  I am looking forward to one of his Eisenhower books along with others.
  • D-Day / The Air and Sea Invasion of Normandy in Photos by Nicholas A. Veronico – This bran-new 2019 publication may well be the best recent work on the subject.  In addition to concise writing it is packed with photos and data — not to mention a bibliography that can’t be beat.
  • D-Day by Peter Benoit, D-Day / The Invasion of Normandy 1944 by Rick Atkinson, and D-Day by Charlie Samuels – D-Day books for various age youths.  Straightforward photos and facts to introduce the next generation to the history and significance of this important day to remember.
  • D-Day / The WWII Invasion That Changed History by Deborah Hopkinson – I’m frankly disappointed by this book.  Picking it up it appears to be on-par with the work of Cornelius Ryan and Stephen Ambrose (ETC) — the book is large and thick — but that is a first impression only.  Upon closer inspection, as an author I can tell you there are a few tricks that have been used to make the book appear more impressive.  The two main tricks is that the book is not single-spaced and it is loaded with pictures; take out the photos, make it single spaced, and it is half the length at best.  This 2018 publication does not appear to present anything new on the topic and is possibly written in such a manner as to not ‘offend’ the Politically Correct (ETC) crowd &/or to spoon-feed D-Day to the delicate middle-grade blue-ribbon crowd.  The good thing I can say about the book is that it is worth it for accessing the D-Day related pictures … other than that, other books are in my opinion better information sources whereas this one is comparatively watered-down.  And for my uses … no apparent mention of Bill Millin on Sword Beach or at Pegasus Bridge.

If you would like to support my writing endeavours today, please find my book “Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies” on Amazon, Smashwords and their affiliates.  4 Free Recipes are available if you would like to try before you buy.

Movie, Review, Zombies

Beast Within (AKA Virus Undead) (2008)

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Beast Within is rated Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

This film should be watched at very least because it’s directed by two people with the names Wolf Wolff and Ohmuthi.

From what I can tell it’s a German Z-film made for American audiences.  It looks & feels a bit like 28 Days Later where an alternate version of the avian flu transmits a zombie virus.  Add to the mix Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic “The Birds” — and don’t forget the college slasher film element, which of course means we also see Z-film breasts — but I gotta hand it to Wolf Wolff and Ohmuthi, what is displayed isn’t gratuitous as with most Z-films.  The display of gratuitous Z-film breasts is tastefully done, but don’t watch this with your kids or your parents … or my parents.

Oh, and how about this — NO JOURNEY — even though the main charactres are at the epicenter, they feel that where they’re at is the best place to be.  Also, I gotta like the zombie cop who still eats doughnuts even though he’s undead, and I dig the recording of the grandfather’s voice that reminds me of The Evil Dead I & II.  The birds in “The Birds” were better than the digital birds appeared often enough in this film … which is saying something because I’ve never seen all of “The Birds“.

Beast Within AKA Virus Undead – IMDB and Wikipedia

For Every Musician, Movie, Review

Joyeux Noël AKA Merry Christmas (2005)

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I’ve wanted to watch the 2005 film “Joyeux Noël” (AKA Merry Christmas) for years — finally got to and I’m very glad I did!  One could easily say that every piper, every musician, and every person ought to.

We all know the setting…

The Great War, which of course later came to be known as World War I and lasted from 28July1914 to 11November1918.  It is viewed as being the first modern war and the most destructive.

Scottish soldiers in a WWI trench
Emerging from the trenches with Silent Night in the film.

During the first year of the war there were a number of informal and unauthorized “Christmas truces“, where men on both sides of the Western Front line stopped fighting to celebrate the holiday … and in some cases met in the middle to celebrate together.  Joyeux Noël is a dramatization of a group of French, Scottish, and German soldiers.  Having heard Silent Night on bagpipes from trench and the singing of the classic song by a German vocalist in another trench, they rose and met on No Man’s Land in one of these truces.

Maybe I think too much, this gets listed as an anti-war film.  I’m not always sure what makes a song or a film (etc) an anti-war piece — or to say, some are more obvious and direct than others.  What I am clear on is that Joyeux Noël shows that we as different cultures can set aside our differences, meet together peacefully, and share what we have in common.  To me some of the significance of this film has to do with universal languages — among those I believe are math and music.  As musicians we bring people together — in good times, in bad times, and bridging our different languages.  The lyrics may sound different but the music is the same.

Here are my side-notes on this film — in other words, these are the not important things I observed …

To me this film looked great — the costumes were good, there were four languages in this film (so long as you count the priest delivering a sermon in Latin), the acting was good, and so far as I could tell everything was period correct.  According to Wikipedia, Joyeux Noël had a budget of $22 million and brought in only $17,709,155 at the box office.  This happens — a well made film with a beautiful message … clearly it did not go unnoticed, and from when I’ve talked about wanting to see it the film apparently resonates in the collective conscious … but I’m saddened that this didn’t get as much notice in the theater that it profited let alone broke even.

As a musician I of course enjoy seeing when singers and instrumentalists are given focus in a film or in a TV show — especially when pipes are featured in a film.  I’m also accustom to these not actually featuring singers or musicians. In the case of this film the actors-not-singing is glaringly obvious — the lip syncing is painful.  The bagpiping in this film is also synced (pipe-synced?), which is understandable — finding actors who play bagpipes is uncommon (yep, sorry — Viggo Mortensen doesn’t actually play pipes in Captain Fantastic, although the filmmakers did a very good job of making it look like he did and Viggo trained hard to look as-so).  The pipe-syncing is both good & bad in Joyeux Noël.  When pipers start playing and then stop playing but the tune continues … that’s bad.  However, at times in this film the actors-not-pipers are seen playing and they actually do a considerably accurate job of appearing to play … so to some extent these guys actually trained — WOW!

The one other hang-up I had, or call it that if you will — there were four sets of bagpipes in the film.  Four clearly bran new, shiny sets of pipes.  I find it hard to imagine that pipes exposed to such conditions would be in such good shape, but this is a small thing so let’s look past it.

Okay, before I get any more into the weeds, let’s just say this — Joyeux Noël was a heck of a film — see it, it well deserves its time in the sun.

Joyeux Noël AKA Merry Christmas

Make no mistake, this is not a buddy-comedy film