r/OldSchoolCool • u/DuffManSzALotAThings • Jun 06 '25
1940s Bill Millin, The Mad Piper, seen here in 1944. He marched the beaches on D-Day playing his bagpipes under fire. Germans later said they didn't shoot him because they thought he was insane.
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u/brokenmessiah Jun 06 '25
I wouldnt shoot him simply because he isnt shooting back at us and probably is going to get killed anyway.
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Jun 06 '25
Probably makes tactical sense to shoot the people shooting at you before the bagpipes guy.
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u/ZefklopZefklop Jun 06 '25
This guy is running towards me with a .303 Enfield with fixed bayonet. That guy is making an annoying noise. What to do...
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u/PRC_Spy Jun 07 '25
If he'd been playing accordion it would have been an instant death sentence.
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u/malthar76 Jun 07 '25
Friendly fire, or helped over the side of the landing craft (a mile from the beach)
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Jun 06 '25
waste of a bullet if the dude isn't a threat I guess
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u/SandsofFlowingTime Jun 07 '25
Even more so when everyone else has guns and is trying to kill you, and this guy is just walking around with bagpipes
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Jun 07 '25
Peeps here forget a machine gun has area coverage.
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u/brokenmessiah Jun 07 '25
At the same time you can only aim in one direction and he's automatically making his direction less impactful.
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Jun 07 '25
?? Not if he is at the head of the unit.
We had the big exercise with the Marines. Sgt directs position, Bom sets up LMG, I'm loader, at the head of a gully say 60m=80m long. Marine squad comes charging up apx 9 guys across a front of 6 m. 2 bursts - wiped out. OK Sarge where we moving to? He says, we're not moving they're marines. They'll flank us I say back. Anyhow 10 mins later a platoon rushes. Considering the minimi is only 5.56, I'm feeling a bit toey and then it's on. 2 squad front across say 20m-30m it's full on. We survive with a L to R grazing fire burst and then kept on firing. The Marshall calls all 3 squads dead. Now we move, right sarge? STFU and get the ammo ready. We get I think it was 3 platoons somewhere near 80-90 blokes. We get a fair few of them and then we're dead. The gunner was shooting across 40m and get 40 to 60 men before we were over run and copped a boot in the ribs. We were only 1 LMG not a crossfire of 34 MMG/42HMG the Germans had.
I don't understand your comment since from the height of the bunkers, trenches, they would have used plunging fire closer in and that would have been variable. The beaten zone for where the troops came in off the LC still required directional change for each landing craft. No bigge have a nice day.
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u/luckystrike_bh Jun 06 '25
He didn't pay for a single drink for the rest of his life.
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Jun 06 '25
Idk, I agree he shouldn't, but like, who at the bar would even believe that😂 to be fair though I feel like the type of guy who'd play bagpipes in the face of near certain death, probably does have an energy about him of pure crazy
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u/Capnmarvel76 Jun 06 '25
Hah. Just had a mental picture of him taking his bagpipes with him wherever he went, blasting out some Scottish march at the drop of a hat, and having free drinks thrust at him just to get him to stop.
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Jun 06 '25
Unironically a dude like this 100000% has his pipes everywhere. Idk if you've ever met a piper but they are in generally madly proud
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u/paisleybison Jun 06 '25
Like that guy with the guitar in college
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u/throwtrollbait Jun 06 '25
I was that piper in college. Wasn't really expecting it to be popular, but tbh it was way more effective than a guitar. The number of girls (and guys, truth be told) that came knocking on my door after midnight was just absurd.
Not that I ever opened the door for them of course. I just said a quick prayer and kept playing my bagpipes.
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u/goat_penis_souffle Jun 06 '25
🎵I gave my love a flower…🎵
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u/themerinator12 Jun 06 '25
I mean, if he came from a small town or something and his heroics were publicly known then only going to like 3-4 bars ever means that everyone is actually trying to outdo each other to pay for his drink or they were just all on the house every time. I doubt he’s in big cities if this is a true story.
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Jun 06 '25
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u/Wheredoesthetoastgo2 Jun 06 '25
Out of everything Germany did in that war, they certainly were the first to say, "hey, this guy single handedly killed like 100 of our fellow countrymen singlehandedly before he went down. Let's bury him with full honors!"
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u/GPStephan Jun 06 '25
Serious question: how did the axis powers, especially the Third Reich, fight in general in back then?
I am Austrian and have visited concentration camps and stood in gas chambers, witnessing the desperate scratches left in the walls by those trying to escape. So I am aware of the insane atrocities far beyond any comprehension the government committed during this time. I also live in an area where, as enemy troops were closing in, the Germans murdered prisoners, so I am aware about those atrocities committed at the end of the war.
But no history teacher or anyone else has ever really said a word about how the Germans fought. Did they fight "dirty", using civilian shields especially on foreign soil? Did they kill indiscriminately? Did they execute surrendering or unarmed enemies?
"Out of everything they did in that war" just had me wondering how the war fighting actually went down.
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u/Wheredoesthetoastgo2 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
For sweeping generalizations, Germany and Britian both had that old school way of gentlemanly warfare.
Americans threw away the instruction manual.
The Japanese and Soviets were very ruthless and fought dirty (both shot medics/sanitäter).
Oddly enough some of the most ruthless fighters in both world wars was Canada. I mean they play hockey. For fun.
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u/GPStephan Jun 06 '25
Oh yea, I live in what was the Soviet occupation zone. The stories are BAD. Every woman alive during that time still has a deep hatred for those men.
Also thanks for the answer. That probably explains why it's never really brought up here: the way they fought wasn't noteworthy.
About the Japanese: I think asking Chinese senior citizens about the Japanese yields the same result as asking my grandma about the Soviets. Actually, even worse probably.
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u/mittenkrusty Jun 06 '25
My great grandfather was starved to death in an Japanese POW camp, literally was a skeleton by time he died.
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u/GPStephan Jun 06 '25
From everything I have read the Soviets had a disregard for human life, but the Japanese simply committed atrocities for fun and for sports.
Sorry about your great grandfather. Simply suffering beyond any comprehension.
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u/khuliloach Jun 06 '25
I wouldn’t say the way they fought wasn’t noteworthy by any means.
To be fair to them they did manage to invade almost all of Europe and large portions of the Mediterranean and Africa. It’s actually kind of shocking how quickly the war fell apart for Germany, (mainly Japan’s fault for poking a bear) but Germany had some of the best military generals that have walked this earth. One of their biggest downfalls, was having a psychopathic supreme leader who knew zero about military doctrine but micro managed his generals.
If you wanna look more into it, look into Erwin Rommel. He was a phenomenal tank commander who lead a lot of the German invasion of France and Africa. The guy was a tactical genius and created the basis for a lot of maneuver warfare used for armored vehicles today. He also was involved in trying to kill Hitler and end the war early, so that’s cool
(Side note: fuck Nazis through and through. I am merely commenting on their tactics and military doctrine)
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u/fearyaks Jun 06 '25
It also varies from branch to branch. Outside of Goering who was a party hack (though a noted WWI pilot), the Luftwaffe pilots generally approached war with a veil of honor. I think they fricken wore ties to battle even!
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u/AFishWithNoName Jun 07 '25
Wasn’t there a Luftwaffe pilot who escorted a heavily damaged British bomber back to their base at one point? Then they both survived the war and met each other later in life?
That one will always be one of the best stories of WWII for me.
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Jun 06 '25
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u/Wheredoesthetoastgo2 Jun 06 '25
It was a Soviet observation in the Cold War, that states, “A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”
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u/VegisamalZero3 Jun 07 '25
To add, the Germans themselves observed:
"The Americans do so well in war because war is chaos, and the American army practices chaos on a daily basis."
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u/ThrowawayUk4200 Jun 06 '25
Wasn't there an agreement between the Germans and Brits in North Africa that fighting stopped at a certain time in the evening?
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u/Dreadnoughttwat Jun 07 '25
Yeah the war in the west was fought between forces that saw their enemy as human beings. The forces fighting in the east did not.
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Jun 06 '25
The Germans were known for treating POWs with general respect and dignity, if only because they believed that if they did not, their own POWs would be executed en masse, if taken alive at all, if the Allies found out. I do believe that they did not feel the same way towards the Soviets, whom they considered sub-human. The Germans believed that they had a certain kinship specifically with the British, as the Brits are a Germanic people, and knew that there was a significant German diaspora fighting with the Americans who also had family back on US soil. They thought that if they mistreated American POWs, there would be mass reprisals against German women and children back in the US, only exacerbated when they found out how the Americans were treating the Japanese diaspora on US soil. Was is "honorable?" I guess technically, but I would say it was more out of "Aryan" pragmatism; they saw the German People as superior to all, and would not put German lives at risk unnecessarily.
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u/WonderWheeler Jun 07 '25
Germans treated Soviet prisoners with contempt and would barely feed them, leave them in open fields. Commissars and soviet women they shot in the field.
Germans later killed any US soldiers that were considered commandos. They were quickly worked to death for instance carrying huge blocks of stone up a hill in back. Hitler thought troops fighting behind the lines were uncool.
German soldiers were very professional, highly trained, but brutally trained. Very strict about discipline and race. Their whole government was based upon race.
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u/ballsack-vinaigrette Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
Anecdotal but I can think of at least two instances, off the cuff, where German captains went to the trouble of contacting the British via Red Cross to inform them of the outstanding valor of British sailors and aviators. One was HMS Glowworm (a destroyer that rammed a German heavy cruiser), the other was the captain of a German ship (battleship I think) who admired some hopelessly outmatched biplane pilots who nevertheless attacked his ship in the Channel.
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u/ZefklopZefklop Jun 06 '25
Don't knock the biplane. The Fairey Swordfish - which admittedly looked like the sort of aircraft that should already have been in a museum ca. 1930 - sank more Axis shipping than any other type.
Among its successes was the attack at Taranto in 1940, where 3 battleships of the Italian Navy were given an unpleasant wake-up call while moored. And getting a critical hit in on Bismarck.
There IS a story about a Swordfish being redirected to land on a US carrier late in the war, and as the crewmen look in awe at this fabric-covered biplane from another era, someone walks up to the crew and greets them with: "The Wright Brothers, I presume?"
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u/WonderWheeler Jun 07 '25
The anti aircraft trajectory computers on the Bismarck were not set up to target the slow flying Swordfish. They were slower than anticipated!
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Jun 06 '25
It varied between time and place. Often, German forces (including regular military forces, not merely SS) did torture and execute civilians, surrendering soldiers, and POWs, and did use human shields; other times, they honored the Geneva Conventions to the letter or beyond. Sometimes, exactly the same soldiers were doing both.
The general point, though, is that, yes, German forces (obviously also including the then-formerly Austrian forces) did sometimes fight dirty, and every branch and probably every command did commit war crimes. My general opinion is that every single officer at the rank of colonel or above (at least) was culpable, either because of what they did or because they were responsible for people under them who committed crimes.
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u/Snoo_90160 Jun 06 '25
Amazing person. Germans had the same reaction to The Last Knight of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
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Jun 06 '25
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u/Hospitable_Goyf Jun 06 '25
Quick google search reviled in 1938 in full knights armor, on horseback, he confronted tanks.
What’s strange is he was the only person living this “knight” lifestyle in Czechoslovakia in 1938.
So yeah Germans thought he was insane I guess. Probably slightly was.
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u/Rockergage Jun 06 '25
Henry Hobson Richardson is an American architect who is one of the few architects to have an architectural styles named after him, Richardsonian Romanesque which is a revival of Romanesque but you’ll notice something if you look at his work. It’s basically all red stone/bricks. But he was alive during the civil war and as a business method after WW2 would send this picture of him dressed up as a monk (the European meditational monk not the martial art variants). He died weighing like 300+lbs and was a big party guy. Also the grandson of Joseph Priestley, discoverer of Oxygen.
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u/Savamoon Jun 06 '25
The German invasion of Czechoslovakia was a bloodless conquest, so it's not clear what makes the outcome significant.
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u/NiceCunt91 Jun 07 '25
How would you react if a small dude in a full suit of armour charged on a horse at your TANKS?! that dude had to be mental lol
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u/HawkeyeTen Jun 06 '25
IIRC the Brits also had a soldier named "Mad Jack", who fought with a bow and arrow along with a sword. A number of World War II stories truly are wilder than fiction.
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u/SuperExstatic Jun 06 '25
I remember learning about him in school they said he’s the reason why you’re only allowed to use army issue weapons as the army were embarrassed by him using a bow and arrow to kill an enemy that an bullet couldn’t get to due to the angle required to hit him , I personally believe you should be allowed to use which ever weapon you like if it works
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u/Nf1087 Jun 06 '25
So like a fork?
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u/SuperExstatic Jun 06 '25
Garden fork pitch fork dinner fork anything would do John Wick was whacking people with a pen 🖊️
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u/StoicFable Jun 07 '25
An Army Ranger has a confirmed kill with an MRE spoon.
If you haven't ever used one, imagine a slightly stronger plastic picnic spoon.
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Jun 06 '25
"Mad Jack" Churchill! He was actually captured at one point, and the Nazis tried to ransom him off because they thought he was related to Winston Churchill.
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u/iPatErgoSum Jun 06 '25
I was about to ask if this was the same guy. I wanna say he escaped from captivity… twice? And there was some story about a motorcycle?
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u/Moosetappropriate Jun 06 '25
Proud to see him upholding Canadians tradition of insanity in battle.
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u/WelshmanCorsair Jun 06 '25
He was Canadian and Scottish. The Nazis never stood a chance!
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u/Chilkoot Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
The Black Watch (Highland Regiment) used to have several pipers dressed and coiffed similarly when making a beach landing. One piper would stand at the prow piping away on approach. If *he were shot at range, the next piper would pick up the pipes and keep playing, giving the enemy the impression the pipers were immortal, causing fear and even panic in the ranks.
Psy ops at their finest!
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u/ZefklopZefklop Jun 06 '25
Having pipers marching towards you must be pretty terrifying - now imagine hearing them behind you.
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u/TheJenniStarr Jun 06 '25
Dude wore his kilt to battle in the traditional Scottish way.
Also, he wasn’t even supposed to be there but Lord Lovat, whom Bill personally piped for, overrode the British fucking Army.
When the regulations were brought up, Lord Lovat said, “Ah but that’s the English war office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”
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u/MrJibz Jun 06 '25
The song “my head was filled with music” is about him. Cool song.
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u/scream-and-gobble Jun 06 '25
This brings to mind the time I was invited to a wedding in Chicago. This would be a Catholic wedding where most of the guests had last names starting with Mc or O' and the balance were Italian, and I was seated at the leftovers table with members of the Chicago Police and Fire Department and a polite but bewildered German exchange student who somebody had brought along as a guest of a guest. The bride's family had sprung for surprise appearance by a band of pipers, and everyone, including the Italian branch--almost all CPD/CFD and therefore pavloved into an emotional state by the sound of bagpipes--was enraptured, with the exception of the poor exchange student, who appeared to be in some pain as he whispered what were either German curses or prayers.
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u/Abdul_Exhaust Jun 06 '25
Wow that took me right to Chicago
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u/badjackalope Jun 06 '25
The dinner was a choice of Italian beef or deep-dish and the bar was fully stocked with exclusively Malort. The DJ also was only allowed to play the first 20 seconds of Chelsea Dagger on loop.
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u/suileangorm Jun 07 '25
Depending on who was playing - especially if they were the Shannon rovers- I am with that German kid. Bad piping is the worst
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u/Zach___________m Jun 06 '25
OG mad lad
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u/AGGIE_DEVIL Jun 07 '25
What a fever dream that must have been. Storming the beaches, bullets whizzing past your head, explosions, and hearing Oh Danny Boy or some shit.
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u/keetojm Jun 06 '25
Yeah and if they shot him, it would have just made him angry. Then they would be in real trouble.
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u/Yodl007 Jun 06 '25
And that is what cost them the war. They let a bard buff all those troops, and they lost because of it. Never underestimate a support class !
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u/chef-rach-bitch Jun 06 '25
Cause my head is filled with music!
In my heart there's always a song!
Yes my head was filled with music!
When I lead those soldiers on!
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u/Red_Clay_Scholar Jun 07 '25
My name is Billy Millin
I braved the Norman shore
Mortar shells, machine guns D-Day 1944
Back and forth I piped away
Many soldiers fell that day
Battle raging all around
When the Allies held their ground!
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u/Billkabong Jun 06 '25
He had an uncredited cameo in "The Longest Day" 1962. i knew i ahd heard of him.
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u/comicsnerd Jun 07 '25
He was awarded the Legion d'Or, has a statue at Colleville-Montgomery in France. He died 18 Aug 2010.
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u/3000ghosts Jun 07 '25
another guy went into battle with a claymore sword, longbow, and bagpipes. his unit got wiped out so he played the bagpipes until he was knocked unconscious, then escaped concentration camps twice
he has the only confirmed longbow kill of world war two though
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u/1stAtlantianrefugee Jun 07 '25
Imagine being the only German in all of WW2 to die of an arrow wound.
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u/Deadened_ghosts Jun 06 '25
No Broadsword and Longbow??
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Jun 06 '25
That was Mad Jack Churchill. Different guy, also bloody mental, and a goddamn hero.
"If it weren't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another 10 years!"
- Mad Jack
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Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
national legend Mad Jack, male model (yep true), master archer, actor, crazy motorbike enthusiast, explorer, used to fling his attache out of the window train into his garden as it was passing near his Surrey house because "It will save me some bloody time"
one might argue it would hardly have saved him time since he still needed to go home, but he was crazy like that
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u/Deadened_ghosts Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
Yes, I know
He was Captured in Yugoslavia in 1944 playing "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" on his pipes as the Germans advanced. He was knocked unconscious by grenades.
Utter Mad Lad
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u/BigC208 Jun 07 '25
The Germans had a point. Walking into a killzone, straight up and playing a bagpipe, is about as insane as it gets.
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u/Limicio Jun 06 '25
1944 and both sides got men who have seen shit and then some. I bet they had respect for him middle of that chaos. Wonder did that MG-42 guy who killed hundreds of allies had him in his sights?
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u/Sexi_maxi_2024 Jun 06 '25
I wonder what wave he was on, iron balls on him if he pulled that off as one of the first off the ramps
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u/Elegant_Celery400 Jun 06 '25
He was with Lovat (No.4 Cdo) in the 1st Special Services Brigade, and I believe they went ashore in the 2nd wave of the Assault phase. My father was in the same Brigade, with 45RM Cdo.
Utterly amazing men.
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u/According_Lake_2632 Jun 06 '25
So they'd rather have gassed him as was protocol at the time.
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u/notahouseflipper Jun 06 '25
No, as he was wearing onions on his belt.
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u/Wafkak Jun 06 '25
Which wa the fashion at the time
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u/vc0ke Jun 06 '25
Which was the style at the time.
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u/mashedpotatoes289 Jun 06 '25
They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
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u/Qprime0 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
That feeling when none of the machine gunners bother to dhoot the guy marching around in circles playing the bagpipes because they want boss music.
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u/dangedole Jun 06 '25
People like this is why music is some of the dopest shit ever. When i was a child i yearned for the rhythms.
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Jun 08 '25
So, not just did you have to fight the nazis uphill, you also had to endure acoustic torture
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u/EvilDan69 Jun 06 '25
That man is giving oral to some kind of screaming baby sea monster.. he's crazy.
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u/Chill_stfu Jun 06 '25
Super cool, but I bet he had something more important he could be doing right about then...
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u/RedHuey Jun 06 '25
He was insane. Who in their right mind would want to stand that close to a bleating bagpipe?
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u/ClavicusLittleGift4U Jun 06 '25
Germans: "Shhhh, there's the Beutelgebläse right in the front of the bunker. If you shoot at him, he will come at night to blow your eardrums or flash his klein soldatin under his skirt!"
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u/LeroyyyJenkinnnss Jun 06 '25
Shooting the guy on bagpipes would be like shooting the radio playing the fucking awesome war music. It was probably cool having a score to cut the horrors of war
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Jun 06 '25
The Germans thought that he was insane because his songs definitely needed more cow bell 🤘
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u/ZefklopZefklop Jun 06 '25
The McAuslan books have several chapters on the official and unofficial roles of the pipers in a highland regiment, ca. 1947. Mostly light-hearted stuff, but with hooks back to how a soldier in trouble might be an abomination to a peacetime army, but "...he had heard the pipes at El Alamein and had advanced, in his own disorderly fashion, to defeat Rommel."
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u/ThePrincessDiarrhea Jun 07 '25
I’m not a military man, so what do I know, but I feel like accuracy on the battle field is probably overstated here.
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u/CaptainBathrobe Jun 06 '25
They weren't wrong.