During Operation Overlord, he led the Special Service Brigade at Sword Beach and to successfully capture Pegasus Bridge, accompanied by his piper Bill Millin.

[9] In 1940 together with his Stirling cousins (Bill and David) and friends, including Donald Cameron of Lochiel, Lovat planned to create a new unorthodox group of shock fighters (Commandos) who would combine sea, air and land attacks using surprise as a key component.

4 Commando and a 50-man detachment from the Canadian Carleton and York Regiment in a raid on the French coastal village of Hardelot in April.

According to Hilary Saunders, the official biographer of the Commandos the men "were to arouse such a passion of hate and fear in the hearts of their enemies that first Von Runstedt and then Hitler in 1942 ordered their slaughter when captured down to the last man.

During the planning of Operation Overlord, in 1944 Lord Lovat was made a brigadier and appointed the Commander of the newly formed 1st Special Service Brigade.

[15][16] Lord Lovat instructed his personal piper, Bill Millin, to pipe the commandos and himself ashore, in defiance of orders specifically forbidding such actions in battle.

[17] When Private Millin demurred, citing the regulations, he recalled later, Lord Lovat replied: "Ah, but that's the English War Office.

Lord Lovat's commandos arrived at a little past 1 p.m. at Pegasus Bridge though the rendezvous time stipulated in the plan was noon.

Upon reaching the rendezvous, Lord Lovat apologised for his unit's lateness to Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Pine-Coffin, of 7th Parachute Battalion.

During the Battle of Breville on 12 June, Lord Lovat was seriously wounded whilst observing an artillery bombardment by the 51st Highland Division.

[19] Lord Lovat made a full recovery from the severe wounds he had received in France but was unable to return to the army (he transferred to the reserve in 1949).

[20] Winston Churchill requested that he become Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms in the House of Lords; however, Lord Lovat declined the offer and in 1945 joined the Government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, "becoming responsible for the functions of the Ministry of Economic Warfare when these were taken over by the Foreign Office",[21] resigning upon Winston Churchill's election defeat.

Lord Lovat experienced a great deal of sadness in his final years; two of his sons predeceased him in accidents within days of each other.

In 1994, a year before his death, the family's traditional residence, Beaufort Castle, was sold by his eldest son, Simon Fraser, to pay inheritance taxes.

There is some suggestion that the charlatan commando character "Trimmer" in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy of novels is based on Lovat.

[24] In an article in Standpoint magazine, Paul Johnson wrote: ...by vindictive cunning of a high order, [Waugh] manages to foist the ultra-plebeian Trimmer on the exquisite person of Brigadier Lord Lovat, head of the clan Fraser, who had his own family regiment and was known from his looks as "the upper-class Erroll Flynn".

"Shimi" Lovat committed the unforgivable sin of ejecting Waugh from the Commandos since, he told me, "he had made himself so hated by his men they would have shot him in the back as soon as they went into action."