The King's War Read online

  Chamberlain then went to the House of Commons, which was meeting on a Sunday for the first time in its history. Just after midday, he began to address MPs. Since becoming Prime Minister in May 1937, he had devoted all his energies to avoiding war by appeasing Hitler. Now this policy lay in tatters. ‘This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me,’ he told the House, which cheered as he rose to his feet.

  Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do; that is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much. I cannot tell what part I may be allowed to play myself; I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established.

  The King listened closely to his Prime Minister’s words. He had been a wholehearted supporter of appeasement, inviting Chamberlain to stand with him on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, their respective wives at their sides, in September 1938 after the Prime Minister returned from his meeting with Hitler in Munich with the false promise of ‘peace in our time’. The ‘pro-Chamberlain appeasement point of view prevailed at court ... from the highest to the lowest,’ complained Alexander Hardinge, the King’s private secretary, who was unhappy with the monarch’s stance.5 By associating himself so closely with a specific government policy that was to be subject to a vote in parliament, the King’s behaviour verged on the unconstitutional. Yet the rapturous applause with which he and Chamberlain were greeted by the crowds gathered below showed this was a view also shared by many – perhaps the majority – of his subjects who were desperate to avoid another world war, especially one expected to involve the large-scale bombing of Britain. ‘They all complain about Chamberlain nowadays but at the time he had a great deal of support,’ noted the Queen many years later.6

  The bankruptcy of Chamberlain’s policy had been exposed by Hitler’s subsequent actions, which culminated that Friday when Germany launched simultaneous attacks by land, sea and air on Poland, introducing the world to a new kind of hell: Blitzkrieg. At a stroke, any prospect of negotiating a peaceful settlement had been swept away. The following evening, as London was hit by a massive thunderstorm that sent cascades of water crashing down onto the city, the King was told that his Prime Minister was now ready to act and to issue Hitler an ultimatum. As he went to bed that night, he knew the Nazi leader would refuse to comply.

  The Queen woke at 5.30 on the Sunday determined to experience a last bath at leisure and her final cup of tea in a country still at peace. At 10.30 she joined the King in his sitting room to listen to Chamberlain’s broadcast. Tears were running down her face as the Prime Minister spoke. When the siren sounded the false alarm after his broadcast, she and the King looked at each other. Their hearts beating fast, they went down into the basement, which had been converted into an impromptu air raid shelter, gas masks in hand, and waited for the first bombs to fall. When the all-clear was sounded they came back upstairs and gathered for prayers in the 1844 Room, so named because it had been decorated in that year for the state visit of Tsar Nicolas I of Russia.

  The Logues had been listening to Chamberlain speak at their home, Beechgrove House, on Sydenham Hill in south-east London. Like many people in Britain, their reaction to the declaration of war was a feeling of release. ‘A marvellous relief after all our tension,’ Lionel recorded in his diary. ‘The universal desire is to kill the Austrian house painter.’ As he wrote later to Rupert Gruenert, Myrtle’s brother in Perth: ‘To have a war was the only way out. We are well prepared (not like last November at Munich) and already have demonstrated our planes are superior to the Germans”.

  It was a measure of how well Lionel’s career had been going that he and Myrtle had moved in 1932 from their flat in Bolton Gardens to this imposing mid-Victorian villa on the edge of Dulwich Woods. The house, which dated from the early 1860s, was enormous: it had twenty-five rooms, five bathrooms and five acres of grounds, including a tennis court – and some illustrious former owners. It was built by William Patterson, an East India merchant, who first named it ‘Singapore’ but then decided Beechgrove would be more appropriate. The house changed hands several times after Patterson’s death in 1898. Subsequent owners included Samuel Herbert Benson, regarded as one of the pioneers of modern advertising thanks to his campaign for Bovril, and Sir William Watson Cheyne, who went on to become president of the Royal College of Surgeons. Shortly after the Logues moved in, the Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift, the charity that owned the freehold of Beechgrove and much of the other land in Dulwich, granted him permission to put up a small brass plate outside with his name on it to advertise his services as a curer of speech defects.

  The house had provided the Logues with more than enough room in which to bring up their three sons, but its size meant it required money and staff to maintain – both of which they knew would now be in short supply. That Friday Myrtle had broken the news to her housemaid that, with war coming, she could no longer afford to keep her. Myrtle was relieved that she took it so well. ‘She is so optimistic and says, “there ain’t going to be a war, madam. Old Moore’s Almanack says so’”, Myrtle wrote in the diary that she was to keep for a large part of the war. The housemaid was still cheerful when Myrtle saw her off the next day, telling her that she wouldn’t have their only son ‘excavated’ to the country, preferring that he remain in London and take his chances.

  By contrast, their cook, Therese, a Bavarian who had lived in London for a decade, was worried about how she would fare as an enemy alien once Britain and Germany were at war. Coming downstairs, Myrtle found her in floods of tears.

  ‘Oh, Madam, I am caught – it is too late to get away,’ Therese wailed.

  Myrtle suggested they go upstairs to listen to the wireless, which they did, only to hear, to their alarm, a notice of general mobilization.

  ‘I look at her tear-stained swollen face and think I must do something, so suggest that as war has not yet been declared she should ring up her Embassy and enquire,’ Myrtle wrote in her diary. ‘She does and is informed that there is a last train leaving at 10 a.m. on the next day. I send her upstairs to pack.’

  Therese was still looking miserable and tear-stained when she set off the next day. Myrtle, meanwhile, was left to contemplate with horror how she was going to look after the house with her sole remaining domestic help – a young Czech refugee who had little experience of domestic service and drove Myrtle to distraction with her pidgin English.

  About midday, shortly after Chamberlain had finished speaking, the Logues’ telephone rang. It was Sir Eric Miéville, who after a highly distinguished career of public service in China and India had been appointed assistant private secretary to George VI shortly before he came to the throne. The King was to broadcast to the nation that evening at six o’clock and needed Logue to help him to prepare. Logue was driven to the Palace by their eldest, Laurie, who was now aged thirty and living with his wife of three years, Josephine – or Jo, as she was always known in the family – in nearby Crystal Palace. It could have been any late-summer day in London had it not been for the sun shining on the barrage balloons, turning them silvery blue. Laurie dropped his father off at 5.20 and turned the car round. He wanted to be back at Beechgrove in time to listen to the broadcast. Logue left his hat, umbrella and gas mask in the Privy Purse Hall and climbed the stairs.

  The King received Logue in his private study, rather than the room they normally used, which was being readied for the post-broadcast photograph. He had already changed into his admiral’s uniform. From that moment on until the end of the war, he never appeared in public except in military garb, to indicate he was permanently on active service. He handed Logue a copy of the text of the broadcast: it was a simple one, intended to prepare his subjects for the struggle that lay ahead and unite them in their determination to achieve victory. Logue r
ead through it, just as he had read through countless past speeches, looking carefully for words that the King might stumble over and, where possible, substituting something easier. Thus ‘government’ was replaced with ‘ourselves’, while ‘call’ took the place of ‘summon’. He also marked points at which to take a pause.

  As the King rehearsed, Logue was impressed with how well he read. He felt proud of how far he and his patient had come since their first meeting all those years ago in Harley Street. He was also struck by how sad the King sounded. Logue tried in vain to lighten the mood, reminding him how the two of them had sat in the same room, together with the Queen, on Coronation night in May 1937 preparing for the broadcast he had been due to make to the Empire, which, at the time, had seemed equally daunting. Logue made the King laugh as they talked about how much had happened during the intervening two and a half years.

  At that moment, the door at the other end of the room opened, and the Queen came in to give her husband last-minute encouragement. They did not have long to talk. With just three minutes to go, it was time to move into the Broadcasting Room. Normally, the only other people in the room for the broadcast would be Logue and Wood, the BBC sound engineer who had worked with the King since his accession to the throne, and was, according to Logue, ‘a great tower of strength ... [he] does know his job’. This time, Frederick Ogilvie, the economist who had taken over from John Reith as Director General of the BBC the previous year, had asked Logue if he could also be present. Logue said he would have to consult the King; he did not want anything that would make him even more nervous. As they crossed the corridor, the King beckoned to Ogilvie to join them. The room had been redecorated since Coronation night and was bright and cheerful, but the mood was sombre. The King knew how much was riding on this speech, which would be heard by millions of people across the Empire.

  After fifty seconds, the red light came on. Logue looked at the King and smiled as he watched him step up to the microphone. The King allowed himself the tiniest glimmer of a smile in return. The clock outside in the Quadrangle struck six.

  ‘In this grave hour,’ the King began, speaking with great feeling, ‘perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.

  For the second time in the lives of most of us we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain. We have been forced into a conflict. For we are called, with our allies, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilised order in the world.

  It is the principle which permits a state, in the selfish pursuit of power, to disregard its treaties and its solemn pledges; which sanctions the use of force, or threat of force, against the sovereignty and independence of other states. Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that might is right; and if this principle were established throughout the world, the freedom of our own country and of the whole British Commonwealth of Nations would be in danger. But far more than this – the peoples of the world would be kept in the bondage of fear, and all hopes of settled peace and of the security of justice and liberty among nations would be ended.

  This is the ultimate issue which confronts us. For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge.

  It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the seas, who will make our cause their own. I ask them to stand calm, firm, and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail. May He bless and keep us all.

  * Peter Townsend, who later became Princess Margaret’s lover.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sitzkrieg

  The evening was beginning to draw in as Logue left Buckingham Palace and drove back south-eastwards towards Sydenham Hill. Soon London would be plunged into complete darkness. The blackout had begun two days earlier. Mea Allan, a journalist from the Daily Herald, stood on the footway of Hungerford Bridge and looked out across the Thames as the lights went out. ‘The whole great town was lit up like a fairy land, in a dazzle that reached into the sky,’ she wrote.

  ... and then one by one, as a switch was pulled, each area went dark, the dazzle becoming a patchwork of lights being snuffed out here and there until a last one remained, and it too went out. What was left us was more than just wartime blackout, it was a fearful portent of what war was to be. We had not thought that we would have to fight in darkness, or that light would be our enemy.7

  The blackout was an important part of military preparedness. Those responsible for Britain’s defence were convinced that in the event of war German bombers would hit London and the country’s other main industrial and population centres. They therefore set out to remove any points of reference that could guide the enemy to their targets. A form of blackout had been introduced in 1915 during the First World War; when a Zeppelin was known to be en route, lights were dimmed rather than put out completely. In the intervening two decades, the threat from the air had grown considerably. The Germans had held their own first blackout exercise in Berlin in 1935, and two years later, Britain followed suit: the Home Office launched an appeal to recruit 300,000 ‘citizen volunteers’ to be trained as air raid precautions (ARP) wardens. Blackout rehearsals began early in 1938, with RAF bombers flying overhead to check for leakages of light.

  Traffic emerged as the main problem: even cars driven on only sidelights rather than headlights were clearly visible from above, creating a stream of light that revealed the pattern of the roads. These could then be correlated by enemy bombers with their pre-war maps, allowing them to identify their targets. And so cars’ headlights were masked to reveal only a crack of light, windows were covered by blackout curtains and blinds and railway stations lit by candles. Britain was to endure this enforced darkness until 23 April 1945, eight days after the liberation of Belsen, by which time the Allied armies were moving on Berlin.

  Like other Londoners, the Logues had been working to get their home ready for the air raids that were widely expected to begin almost immediately after the outbreak of war. On 1 September, the day the lights went out, their youngest son, Antony, an athletic eighteen-year-old with wavy brown hair known in the family as Tony or simply ‘Kid’, had been dispatched to the local library and came back with a sheet of blackout paper. The mammoth task of blacking out the house was made easier by the fact that many of its windows had shutters. Myrtle had been planning to rip them out ever since they moved into Beechgrove, but, thankfully, seven years later, she had still not got round to doing so. The shutters would also help to protect them against flying glass. The house was so large, though, that even with the blinds, there was still not enough paper to cover all the windows, so Antony left the one in the bathroom uncovered.

  This did not seem much of a problem, but at 10 p.m. as Myrtle was brushing her teeth before going to bed, there was a knock on the front door. She opened it to two ARP wardens, who, along with their colleagues, had been touring London to take to task those whose windows were not properly blacked out. Politely but firmly, they told her to put out the light. Myrtle recorded in her diary that she found it very ‘trying’ sleeping in a heavily shuttered room. ‘One has the feeling of a chrysalis in the semi-gloom; all the windows covered with black out paper,’ she wrote in her diary.

  Walking the streets of London during the blackout could be even more disorientating, as was clear from other contemporary accounts.
‘For the first minute going out of doors one is completely bewildered, then it is a matter of groping forward with nerves as well as hands outstretched,’ wrote one diarist, Phyllis Warner.8 Unused to the darkness, people would bang into strangers or tumble over piles of sandbags. The effects of the blackout were not just psychological: by the end of the first month of war it had been blamed for 1,130 road deaths. Coroners urged pedestrians to carry a newspaper or a white handkerchief to make themselves more visible. The casualty departments of hospitals began to fill up with people who had been run over by cars whose headlights had been reduced to little more than a pinprick, broken their legs while stepping off trains onto nonexistent platforms or sprained their ankles stumbling over unseen kerbs.

  A number of the injured ended up at St George’s Hospital, where the Logues’ middle son, Valentine, by then aged twenty-six, was working as a junior doctor after having qualified in 1936. The hospital, situated in Lanesborough House, a grand neoclassical building on Hyde Park Corner, became a unit of the Emergency Hospital Service, providing 200 beds for war casualties and 65 beds for the civilian sick – many of the latter victims of the blackout. During the first night of the war, Valentine was up all night tending to patients who had come to grief on the streets of the capital. The casualties kept on coming in the weeks that followed as the nights got longer.

  The blackout was part of a series of measures to protect London and other cities from what it was assumed would be a massive air assault: air raid sirens were installed and barrage balloons, each as big as three cricket pitches and tethered by giant cables, sent up to force bombers to fly to a higher altitude where they could be shot down more easily by anti-aircraft guns. Hospital patients were evacuated from the capital in anticipation of a flood of air raid casualties. Trees, pavements, letter boxes and lamp-posts were marked with bands of white paint. During the Munich crisis, local authorities had begun to dig trenches in parks to provide shelters, which the government afterwards decided to turn into a permanent feature, with a precast concrete lining. Those with gardens of their own dug holes in which they half-buried Anderson shelters, simple structures made up of galvanized corrugated steel panels with room for up to six people, which took their name from Sir John Anderson, the Lord Privy Seal. Those whose homes had cellars or basements were given steel props to provide more protection. Sandbags were stacked around the more vulnerable public buildings. Authorities built public shelters and selected the basements and other suitable parts of shops and office blocks for use in air raids, often to the displeasure of their owners.