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)
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!
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
- D-Day / Minute by Minute by Jonathan Mayo – This book gives a ‘real-life’ presentation of D-Day as each hour passes. It is an amazing book and I would be thrilled to have a copy in my collection.
- 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! With it I watched the cast-of-thousands film by Darryl F. Zanuck for my third-or-so time. While it does not include everything in Ryan’s book it presents much of it with considerable adherence to detail — not common these days with books-turned-film — 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 reviewed to his Pegasus Bridge as an audiobook; Ambrose seemed to largely craft this text using interviews and I 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 brand-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.
- I also have copies of the following e-books from my library however have not had time to get into them yet — D-Day by Stephen E. Ambrose and D-Day / The Battle for Normandy by (Sir) Antony Beevor. I’m already impressed by Ambrose’s work and from what I’ve gathered about Beevor’s book it sounds to be a valuable text.
Middle-grade and Youth-oriented Books
- D-Day by Charlie Samuels – Part of the “Turning Points In US Military History” collection, for its target audience this book looked excellent!
- D-Day / A True Book by Peter Benoit – This book is similar to the Charlie Samuels’ text … only that I’m uncomfortable with a history book that says it is a ‘true’ history book.
- D-Day / The Invasion of Normandy 1944 by Rick Atkinson – I plowed through the Atkinson book looking for information on my subject. In my opinion based on the other books I have studied, the author glosses over details and frequently presents them with gross mistakes.
- 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.
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So last night I got my first real opportunity to dive-back-in. I reviewed all of this information, which includes these odd sections. It’s a bit overwhelming but I can see the work ahead. The long and short of it I know is this — once I have this bit of D-Day history written for the WWII chapter …. the rest of the work to complete the book project is all downhill eating cake wearing roller skates.