France awarded him a Légion d’honneur for gallantry in June 2009. He made regular trips back to Normandy for commemoration ceremonies. In the 1950s he became a registered psychiatric nurse in Glasgow, moving south to a hospital in Devon in the late '60s until he retired in the Devon town of Dawlish in 1988. Millin saw further action with 1 SSB in the Netherlands and Germany before being demobilised in 1946 and going to work on Lord Lovat's highland estate. Piper Bill Millin's bagpipes played on Sword during the D-Day landings on display at Dawlish Museum along with his bonnet, 100-year-old kilt and dirk A set of pipes he used later in the campaign, after the originals became damaged, were donated to the now 'Pegasus Bridge Museum'. Millin's D-Day bagpipes were later donated to Dawlish Museum. Later detachments of the commandos rushed across in small groups with helmets on. During the march, twelve men died, most shot through their berets. To the sound of Millin's bagpipes, the commandos marched across Pegasus Bridge. at Pegasus Bridge although the rendezvous time in the plan was noon. Lovat's commandos arrived at a little past one p.m. Lovat and Millin advanced from Sword to Pegasus Bridge, which had been defiantly defended by men of the 2nd Bn the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry ( 6th Airborne Division) who had landed in the early hours by glider. Millin, whom Lovat had appointed his personal piper during commando training at Achnacarry, near Fort William in Scotland, was the only man during the landing who wore a kilt – it was the same Cameron tartan kilt his father had worn in Flanders during World War I – and he was armed only with his pipes and the sgian-dubh, or 'black knife', sheathed inside his kilt-hose on the right side.

Millin states that he later talked to captured German snipers who claimed they did not shoot at him because they thought he had gone mad. Millin played ' Highland Laddie' ' The Road to the Isles' and 'All The Blue Bonnets Are Over The Border' as his comrades fell around him on Sword Beach. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn't apply.' When Private Millin demurred, citing the regulations, he recalled later, Lord Lovat replied: 'Ah, but that's the English War Office. Lovat, nevertheless, ignored these orders and ordered Millin, then aged 21, to play. However, the use of bagpipes was restricted to rear areas by the time of the Second World War by the British Army. Pipers had traditionally been used in battle by Scottish and Irish soldiers.

Millin is best remembered for playing the pipes whilst under fire during the D-Day landing in Normandy. Landing on Queen Red Beach, Sword Millin is in the foreground at the right Lovat is wading through the water to the right of the column.

John piper