Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 3 - Bill Millin

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

On episode three we talk about Bill Millin, the Mad Piper of Sword Beach and how sometimes you just have to fight fascism without wearing underwear. We touch on Nick's time storming the beaches of Normandy for the glory of My Chemical Romance and the joys of waterlogged wool clothes. Share, rate, and review us on Itunes for the glory of the Black Parade. Follow the show on Twitter Follow Joe on Twitter Follow Nick on Twitter

Hello and welcome to episode 3 of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. We're your hosts Joe and Nick and today is kind of like a D-Day special even though we know our podcast comes out on Monday so it's going to be past D-Day so I guess the special part really doesn't matter. It's our D-Day extravaganza several days after D-Day. How are you doing Nick? Could be better but can't complain. Yeah. Yeah. better but can't complain yeah yeah so today we're covering bill millen also known as piper bill or the mad piper given to that name was given to him by the germans yeah yeah so shit um if you

if the song in the beginning sounded somewhat familiar, it was from The Longest Day, and it's the dulcet tones of a hot sack of Scottish air, and it sounds terrible. And all the bad vibes. So, William Bill Millen was born on 14 July 1922 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada to Scottish parents. When Bill was three, they moved back to the Scottish motherland when his father decided to become a policeman in Glasgow. He joined the Territorial Army, which is kind of like their version of reserves, in Fort William, Scotland, and played the pipes in the highland light infantry band and the

queen's own cameron highlanders band before deciding he wanted to become a commando he was assigned to number four commando and served as the personal piper to simon frazier the 15th lord lovett 25th chief of the clan frazier commander of the of the first special services brigade and this is normally when i make the joke about it being the most british name in history but he's not technically british so it's the most scottish name in fucking history he also love it had a sweet turtleneck in the longest yard oh the longest day the longest yard he wasn't in the long if he was in the longest yard he'd probably be wearing the same sweet turtleneck. Same turtleneck and Piper falling around a prison.

Like anybody else today, Bill probably thought the whole title of being the personal Piper of somebody was kind of like a peacetime ceremonial gig. And once the bullets started flying, he would probably fight as a commando. Just like he's been trained. Just like everybody else. You know a commando just so like he's been trained just like everybody else um you know commando shit yeah yeah they don't waste money training people be commandos and then like have them shriek noises out of a sack of air in combat um and uh you know bagpipes have been played by skedish and irish soldiers for generations so all this personal piper business was completely normal,

especially for someone as important as Lovett, who was a prominent member of the Ivernus Highlands aristocracy, and you don't get all those sweet titles without having a Piper come with it. It was tradition. However, higher English command obviously seeing the issue with having a musician on the modern battlefield restricted their uses to the rear far away from combat. They would be consigned to history and be brought out for ceremonial purposes just like everyone probably assumed they would be. You know, where military instruments pretty much belong in the 20th century, there's no need to be making music on the battlefield. You're just going to fucking die.

It turned out, unfortunately for poor bill that lord lovett took his bagpiping incredibly seriously uh he ordered millen they then aged 21 uh to play them at the landing at sword beach anyway uh millen obviously unsettled by the prospect of blowing hot air into a sack while facing a storm of german machine gun fire point out this is actually against military regulation um lovett probably had one of the funniest answers to this ever um he didn't let something like military regulation slow him down he was a fucking lord he's he said ah but that's the english war office you and i are both scottish so it doesn't apply right and it should probably point out that it absolutely applied to them they fell under english command but he had a sweet turban like

so yeah fuck it and a mustache his mustache is quite nice too i mean it's not in the level of the other mustaches we've talked about thus far but it's up there it's respectable yeah um millen probably as sure as any of us right now, knew that Lovett wasn't making any sense. He simply obeyed his commander. I guess he knew better. I don't know. Lovett didn't exactly have a bad reputation. He's pretty highly respected.

Right. Which explains why he just nodded and said, all right, let's go ahead and play these bagpipes. Well, in all honesty, I assume Millen thought he was fucking joking. Because he played his pipes while wading through the water. As soon as he got to the beaches, he stopped playing. And Lovett says, oh, play a tune, Millen. And Millen sarcastically goes, eh, what tune would you like to hear? He says, oh, the Road to the Isles.

So me still thinking, oh, this guy's fucking around. He says, do you want me to march up and down the beach? He's like, oh, yes, yes, yes, lovely. March up and down. And he proceeded. And I can imagine Millen was being a smartass like any other junior enlisted soldier in the history of the military whenever there's a higher command person that gets like the good idea fairy and like oh so you want me to do this stupid shit now and he was probably assuming that love

would be like no that's dumb that doesn't make any sense so he kind of like fucked himself yeah and i'm marching up and down the goddamn beach. Playing some fucking... Dropping some sick beats. His diss track on the other. So, on June 6, 1944, at around 0725, Mill and about 28,000 other soldiers of the British Empire set sail for Sword Beach. And we're going to take a little pause there,

talk a little bit more about Sword Beach, as because we're Americans, we really don't hear about it a lot. If the fine history teachers of the Waterford School District in Michigan are to be believed, American soldiers stormed up Omaha and Utah beaches and kicked the Nazis out of France all by themselves. Essentially. Yeah. You don't really hear a whole lot about the British efforts on D-Day.

Well, Sword was one of five different landings that occurred that day. American forces of the First Army under command of General Omar Bradley would land at Utah and Omaha beaches, while the British Second Army under the command of General Miles Dempsey would land at Gold, Juneau, and Sword beaches.

I say British Second Army, they also included Kiwis, Canadians, Aussies, but they all fell under British command. There were a few Polish. The Free Polish Army. So, as the boats landed in the killing fields of Sword Beach and German machine gun fire tore his comrades to shreds, Millen, standing up in totally open enemy fire,

played a heartwarming version of Highland Laddie, the road to the isles, and all the blue bonnets are over the border. Just like Nick was just saying, he's just straight up not taking cover, marching back and forth and railing people forward. And that's something that Lovett said in one of his interviews.

He was like, yeah, it raises the spirit. Could you just imagine him just wincing every time a bullet comes by as he's trying to blow air into this tube. It's like, oh fuck, nope, this is it. Here's the big one. He can't fuck up the diss track.

If he's not fucking hitting fades, he's fucking blowing up diss tracks. It's fucking awesome. Resistance in the beachhead was intense. Destroyed vehicles and the dead and the wounded began piling up on the shore. This whole insane scene was immortalized in the movie we talked about for the longest day where you see commandos

come ashore leaping off their higgins boats and into the churning horror of the beach water um they slowly push against the tide of incoming fire trying to advance towards their objectives in the middle of all of them was bill dropping sick fucking beats. Play that fucking track. Other than his pipes, Millen was only armed with a traditional kilt knife. Oh, yeah, we kind of forgot to mention the kilt thing. Millen was wearing his Klan tartan kilt, the same exact kilt his dad had worn fighting in the fields of Flanders in World War I. Millen makes it a point to tell people in interviews given of the day uh that he wasn't

wearing any underwear per tradition um and it was free balling and when the water hit his balls it took the air out of his lungs and uh so i can have a story that has absolutely nothing to do with d-day to uh to pair with that was when i was in afghanistan i took a knee and um i was also going commando and my pants ripped a stay wide hole in them um just dropping my nuts in full view of everybody and i felt a little exposed and i wasn't being chewed apart by german machine gun bullets i can't imagine how like i mean i know he wasn't exactly wearing a miniskirt and like his mushroom stamp wasn't like sticking out the end but he's still pretty fucking exposed. These are still above knee length.

Huge balls for a kill. Yeah, it's surprising. No trousers could fucking withhold. It is really surprising that he was able to wade to the shore being weighed down by the fucking anchors that were his nuts because how big they were and uh so our host nick here uh also raided a beach when he was cosplaying in a my chemical romance music video tell us a little bit about that because when he first told me that story i did not i thought it was fucking insane that for some reason they got, how many reenactors? It was around 50.

Yeah, like 50 dudes kitted out in World War II era uniforms down to the very boats to storm some beach in California. San Diego. Yeah, San Diego for a My Chemical Romance music video. Yeah, and you know what? You don't see the chaos that ensued that day, but a lot of rifles got rusted that didn't need to get rusted over 60 years old.

Did you see someone almost fucking drowned? Yes, the first fucking midget that went in, this little fucking dude, he's like, all right, let's go. Just sank to the bottom oh fuck well he was only five three it's pretty short that is really short it's not midget-esque but it's definitely little guy um so more compared to us yeah i mean we're both over six feet tall but But at this point, so we were talking about his kilt because it's a tactical skirt.

Basically. Yeah. Creating fighting positions with his balls. So in the longest day, it shows the entire commando unit wearing kilts, and that actually wasn't true. While it was common during World War I for Scottish Highlander soldiers to wear kilts, that actually earned them the nickname the Ladies from Hell from the Germans. Scottish units of the British Army, yeah.

I thought it was like the Bitches from Hell or something like that. That'd be way better. Yeah, but the Germans apparently called them the Ladies from Hell. Classy. Yeah, I mean, you go to... I mean mean he's storming a beach here but imagine like muddy disgusting trench warfare wearing no underwear exactly like that i feel like we

need to mention that part more that they're just freeballing their way through the most horrific parts of human history non-existent in the trenches so everybody smells like balls and scotch whiskey i'm sure they didn't really have baby wipes i'm sure they didn't to do some hot areas but you know scottish units of the british army wore regular uniforms during world war ii um bill millen was the only person running ashore in his scottish tactical dress thankfully for the brit British on the beach, almost all the army's armored vehicles made it to shore unlike pretty much every other beach.

Just like Omaha. And the engineers made quick work of the obstacles and mines and the infantry managed to advance. During the fighting, nearly a thousand British were lost at the beach. Which isn't the worst of D-Day and it's certainly not the worst of the war,

but still a lot for a couple hours. Right. And I'd like to add, the uniforms they wore back then were straight 100% wool. Getting that shit wet sucks. So they became waterlogged? Yes, and fucking itchy as shit.

One of the captured German snipers said that he didn't want to shoot Millen. He would have felt bad because they thought he went insane. It's kind of hard to argue with that because I don't know if I wouldn't have shot the guy, but I certainly would have thought he went insane. He's probably playing some really good shit. Yeah. So he's like, oh. I'll wait until the next track before I shoot him.

I really dig this one. Finish the song. Next play do host. So we have to pause again to explain Operation Deadstick, which was the British airborne operations of D-Day, Operation Dead Stick, which was the British airborne operations of D-Day, which was also in the longest day when the bagpipers and everybody came to the rescue. But later, Mill and Lovett and the rest of the commandos would show up in the relief of the stranded paratroopers who had set off on the night of June 5th, the day before,

with the goal of landing a few hours before the amphibious landing. They were to secure landing zones for the coming 7th Parachute Battalion. Once they're on the ground, they're going to try to control bridgeheads for the advance to go over. And for those of you that don't know, that operation is a perfect name for what they did. They got there by glider, which you're essentially just crashing. This is a crash landing. I believe Buzz Lightyear would call it falling the style.

That's true. Yeah, the Paratroopers were thrown to Earth by badly made plywood gliders towed by Halifax bombers. Yeah, canvas and wood. And on landing, most of them shattered, broke in half, and nearly killed everybody inside. Right.

The first casualty of the operation was actually a soldier who fell into a large pond and drowned. Probably weighed down by everything he had to carry. Yeah, it's because during D-Day, the huge farm areas, they flooded. The Germans flooded, just in case of that exact thing, an airborne operation. You're not going to get all your stuff off in time. How much about is all that way? I know you played around with all that stuff. So when I reenacted, I did 80 second airborne.

So their kit varied a little, but still, I mean, same end state. Right. And they wore way too much for the flotation device to even handle. So they essentially wore it for no reason. Once they strapped on there, was it the cassette bag you called it? The musette bag. Once they strapped on the musette

bag and all the ammo and their weapons and grenades and everything else, they strapped on a life jacket over it. They might as well have just been wearing a sweater like it didn't do anything. You throw your parachute harnesses over your Maewest and the maywest was your uh life preserver nickname because maywest had big tits basically classy it didn't work at all and the first harnesses we had and we used were not quick release harnesses so a lot of guys

drowned for that because of that reason so they'd hit the water and not be able to get the parachute off exactly and that's also they came up with the idea of oh we'll give them this knife i think it was the b3 knife to carry in our the little pocket um close to your collar not like the k-bar that they already carried for the bayonet no we uh the bayonet they carried which varied i know it wasn't exactly a k-bar but no it's uh it it varied some guys didn't want to wear it because you wore it on your uh your hip and as you know plf you're gonna land on your hip explain a little bit what plf is in case there's someone listening who's in the military so plf is basically your five points of contact. You like tuck and roll effectively.

Basically a tuck and roll, but you never do it how you were trained to do it. You hit the ground feet ass head. Basically hard as shit. Well, so the British Airborne Operation, when they landed, was a complete clusterfuck. I mean, I guess in this episode, it isn't really about a donkey leading any lions, but if we were to call something here a donkey, it would be Operation Dead Stick in the first couple hours. They almost got overran, got separated from their support weapons.

It pretty much, you know, they showed it in the American version, Band of Brothers, when everybody got separated and, you know, picking up German weapons because their weapons ended up somewhere else. Pretty much the same thing on a smaller scale happened to the Brits. With the benefit, they knew that they weren't exactly invading the most defended beachhead, so they knew um that they weren't exactly uh invading the most defended beachhead so they knew um you know their their main force wasn't too far behind them um in this case uh they were hours

late um on the battle of pegasus bridge where the seventh parachute battalion was dug in with elements of the sixth um they kept expecting the commandos with armor uh support to show up anytime um and it just didn't happen and you know like all right well you know they're gonna be here anytime and then finally at 13 30 the same day so they've been fighting for 13 hours almost on these bridges um the paratroopers heard the faint but growing sound of bagpipes coming from the direction of the beach sweet mixtape yeah um it was our boy bill and and lovett's commandos at his back um they marched across the bridge in relief taking heavy casualties and when i say, they were literally marching, not necessarily in step to the bagpipe or anything,

but they were just casually strolling in ranks in relief. And they got lit up by snipers and machine guns and lost 12 people. I mean, this isn't exactly a whole division. This is a commando unit, so it's smaller than normal. Losing 12 more people is damaging. Oh, yeah. But thankfully, they linked up with members of the Ox and Buck's light infantry and held the bridge until the armor could get there,

and they chased the Germans off. Thankfully for poor Bill, Lord Lovett finally let him put his damn bagpipes down after that. And further action in the war, he was allowed to operate like an actual soldier. Though we aren't sure if he was allowed to put pants on. They never actually talked about that. I wouldn't want to. I mean, you never have to worry about swamp ass.

Exactly. Bill saw action in the Netherlands and Germany, and his time as a regular commando was finally allowed to happen, and he no longer had to fight like a crazy person armed with a shrieking sack of air. And it should be noted that somehow through all this, Bill was never wounded. Which is insane. Yeah. He was never hurt. Which is insane. Yeah. He was never hurt, even through the rest of his campaigns,

which I don't think he fought at Market Garden in Arnhem, but I don't know what other theater that commando would have been fighting in the Netherlands. I'm not sure as well. But the record on Bill's later war services is pretty thin because it stopped being cool to talk about him when he wasn't playing music. So after the war, he demobilized in 1946 and continued to serve Lord Lovett at his estate. He made regular trips back to the beaches to play pipes uh for

commemorations of the dead and everything and sometimes he played alongside of his own dad which is pretty cool um he was awarded the french legion of honor in 2009 and died in torbay in 2010 um yeah so that is bill millen um just the straight psychopath that i think knew what he was doing was crazy which is like probably one of the funniest things about the whole thing is like there's in all of his interviews he he never makes it sound like the the stoic old war veteran who's i just did what i had to do yeah it's like yeah he fucking told me to run across the goddamn beach shrieking air out of the sack as it sounds yeah and and he knew it was nuts and he knew like his lord had lost his damn mind um and you can kind of tell like i you know in um in his interviews he he makes it sound like he was just a regular smart ass

and uh things just kept working out in his favor and he never got hurt and i i've no idea how it's insane yeah but it's a cool fucking story it's probably one of my favorite well it is my favorite story from d-day that's why we're doing it for the uh the d-day special um i mean you hear stuff about people running into machine gun nests and throwing grenades back at the Germans. But he literally did nothing offensive during D-Day. He never fired a weapon. As far as we know and as far as Bill has ever admitted,

he never shanked any Germans with his fucking sweet kill knife. With his fucking pipes. Yeah. He never smacked anybody with his pipes. He never, you know. he never smacked anybody with his pipes and the exact uniform that he wore that day is in a museum the Imperial War Museum with his bagpipes

he was just serenading the enemy I feel like you were right when you said he was fucking dropping diss tracks like he's spitting hot fire out of his pipes um when he's not handing out fades no fucking throwing down diss tracks dropping some sick beats on the germans and you know they never recovered because unfortunately for them their their rap battle skills went downhill pretty fast over D-Day yes so that's our podcast for today

as before we update every Monday and hopefully next week we'll have a more traditional donkey for you but we're going to keep doing more stuff like this where we talk about just weird insane stuff that happens throughout the history of war we're going to where we talk about just weird insane stuff that happens throughout the

history of war uh we're going to try to talk about more stuff that you probably haven't heard um anywhere else like everybody's heard of of a few giant scripts like custer and stuff like that so we're going to do our best to branch out um talk about more things um maybe stuff like this maybe um i don't know stuff from antiquity that oh yeah let's talk about um it'd be cool you guys can even suggest shit yeah well that'd be cool if you know something from history or you are like us i guess amateur historians uh dan carlton gets away with saying he's not a historian, so I feel perfectly comfortable saying that. Oh, yeah. If you have something, please let us know. You find us on Twitter at jcast99 and Nick at nickcastm1.

That's right. I finally remembered it. This is actually the first podcast that we have. We both have headphones. Yeah, this is great. I know. We're moving on up, man. We even got a fucking board for the ideas that we have. Yeah, we're getting an official in uh my guest bedroom shit's getting weird and awesome um so yeah you can follow the the podcast itself on twitter at uh lions underscore led

um also huge thanks to uh ben watson from the Defense One podcast I did the other day, because this kind of gave me an idea for this to branch off on. And also the other person I talked about, who we have dubbed Umbrella Jesus, who we will talk about further. Huge thanks to you following us and subscribing to us. I can't believe we have over 200 listens and almost 200 subscribers. It's kind of mind-blowing. In one week. Yeah. So do us a favor, share, and leave us a rating on iTunes.

I keep hearing that's a big deal. Yeah, let us know if we suck or if we're terrible. Either one. Yeah, Nick wants to know how bad he sucks. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I know I'm terrible already, so. I know I'm terrible. I i know i'm terrible i just like to hear yeah he's into the humiliation aspect yes so i guess uh that is all for today

and we will see you next monday