On D-Day, Bill Millin stood with his bagpipes on Sword beach, piping the first wave of British forces on to French soil as German bullets landed around him.

Yesterday, 65 years after this act of astonishing bravery and foolhardiness, Mr Millin sat in Devon and listened to a team of French pipers who had come to present him with a statue of that moment.

The mayor of Collville-Montgomery in Normandy (renamed after the war in honour of the commander of Allied forces) has offered a site facing the spot when Mr Millin landed.

Mr Millin, 86, yesterday approved a clay model of a statue of him with kilt and pipes, which will be turned into a one-and-a-half-times life size monument.

“It is a good likeness, I was 21 then, very young,” he said. “It is very good of the French to do this for me. I am very pleased with it and I am looking forward to seeing the finished statue.”

The statue is due for completition, although so far only a few thousand pounds of the £120,000 needed has been raised.

The Mary Queen of Scots Pipe Band of France yesterday piped Mr Millen through the streets of Dawlish, where he now lives in a nursing home.

“We are all passionate about the example of Bill Millin,” said Luc Monod, one of the pipers. “The band aims to pay tribute to all the fallen of the world war through the spirit of Bill Millin.”

The band have been leading efforts in France for a permanent memorial to a man whose actions on June 6, 1944 are legendary.

Mr Millin, originally from Fort William, was personal piper to Lord Lovat, commanding officer of 1st Special Service Brigade which came ashore in the first wave of landings.

Pipers had been ordered not to play because casualties were so high. Lord Lovat decided to ignore the edict, making Mr Millin the only piper to play in battle during the Second World War.

He ordered Mr Millin to play Highland Laddie as the troops landed.

“When I finished, Lovat asked for another tune,” Mr Millin said. "Well, when I looked round - the noise and people lying about shouting and the smoke, the crump of mortars, I said to myself, ‘Well, you must be joking, surely’.

“He [Lovat] said, ‘Would you mind giving us a tune?’ ‘Well, what tune would you like, sir?’ ‘How about The Road To The Isles?’ ‘Would you want me to walk up and down, sir?’ ‘Yes, that would be nice - walk up and down’.”

Although his bagpipes were hit by shrapnel, Mr Millin, who was armed only with a dirk in his sock, escaped uninjured. Using a spare set of pipes, he played all the way to Pegasus Bridge.

Germans said later that they did not shoot him because they assumed he was insane.

After the war Mr Millin became a nurse in Scotland before moving to Devon.

Since a stroke six years ago, he can no longer play the pipes himself.

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