Bill 'Piper Bill' Millin

The piper who led Allied troops into battle on D-Day with his bagpipes has died.

Bill Millin - known as Piper Bill - was originally from Glasgow and was personal piper to Lord Lovat, commander of 1 Special Service Brigade at D-Day.

Lord Lovat ignored orders to restrict pipers to rear areas - and had Mr Millin, then aged 21, brave German bullets to play "Hielan' Laddie" and "Road to the Isles" as his comrades fell around him on Sword Beach.

Later the Germans claimed they did not shoot him because they thought he must be "mad".

Mr Millin's actions were later immortalised in the 1962 film The Longest Day.

In 2001, his famous pipes - which were silenced four days later by a piece of shrapnel - were handed by him to the National War Museum of Scotland.

Last year Mr Millin was presented with a model of a statue that is to be built in his honour in France.

The life-size bronze statue is to be erected by the mayor and people of Colleville-Montgomery for his part in their liberation from the Germans.

He said last year: "It is a good likeness, I was 21 then, very young. It is very good of the French to do this for me."

Mr Millin died aged 88 in a care home in Dawlish, Devon. He had suffered a stroke last year.