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D-Day: The military success that Winston Churchill feared would be a failure

2 June 2017

The battle that has now begun will grow constantly in scale and in intensity for many weeks to come and I shall not attempt to speculate upon its course.
Winston Churchill

On 6 June, 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history was launched – Operation Overlord, better known as D-Day. When Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the invasion in the House of Commons, he was cautiously optimistic of its success.

Dundonian actor Brian Cox is starring as the iconic wartime leader in a new film set in the days leading up to D-Day. He revealed to Timeline’s Glenn Campbell that Churchill actually thought the invasion should not go ahead due to fear of heavy losses in the face of fighting elite enemy formations in north-west Europe.


D-Day numbers

Piping on the battlefield

Another man who had reservations about D-Day was legendary piper Bill Millin. But his were slightly different to those of Winston Churchill – he was asked by Lord Lovat to pipe commandos into battle on one of the French beaches.

His son John reported that his father thought about it for a moment before being quickly convinced when Lovat told him that, ‘This moment will go down in history’.

Unarmed, he played the pipes as the soldiers landed on Sword Beach before they went on to fight their way to Pegasus Bridge.

The kilt was floating in front of me like a ballerina
Bill Millin

One of the commandos, Denis Roby, recalled, ‘We ran over it with bullets singing round our ears, with Lord Lovat and Bill Millin in front’.

Bill Millin was also a commando who became Lord Lovat's personal piper after meeting the famous officer at Achnacarry near Fort William.

As well as the statue in Normandy, Millin’s actions were also immortalised in the 1962 film The Longest Day.

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