Son of D-Day bagpiper pays tribute to his heroic father from north Nottinghamshire garden

• Emma Wilkinson meets John Millin to talk about his father Bill's courageous actions during the D-Day landings. The son of a bagpiper who played as Allied forces scrambled ashore on D-Day is paying tribute to his father by playing the bagpipes in his garden in the lead-up to the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings. John Millin is playing everyday for ten days from his home in Rampton, north Nottinghamshire, in honour of his father, Bill. Bill Millin was a commando who became known as Piper Bill and The Mad Piper due to the way he continued playing under heavy fire from German forces during the landings on 6 June 1944. He was the personal piper to Lord Lovat, who became an integral figure on D-Day, and was told by the commanding officer to march up and down the beach and play Highland Laddie to spur on troops pouring onto Sword Beach in Normandy.

John said his father's memories of the day affected him forever. "He saw some of the men he just sailed with over the Channel killed in front of him," he said.Bill's role in the largest seaborne invasion in history was celebrated in the decades that followed, including in the Academy Award-winning 1962 film The Longest Day which depicted the landings. John said: "The constant reminders affected him psychologically but at the same time he thought, well, if people are going to focus on the bagpipes then they are not going to forget."So every time he played was an act of remembrance."

Having never picked up the bagpipes to play himself, just two weeks before his father died, John promised Bill he would learn and play one song when a statue was unveiled of Piper Bill in France in 2013. John said: "I think he would have been proud that finally I had picked up the pipes to play."Invoking a speech Lord Lovat gave to his troops during the Second World War, John said: "In a hundred years' time your children's children will look back and say, 'they must have been giants.'"He added: "My father was my giant."

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