The King's War Read online

  A few weeks later, the hospital gave Valentine a couple of days off work, and he and his mother drove up to Leeds to see how Antony was settling in. It was pouring with rain, and the journey northwards in Valentine’s sports car was an arduous one, especially after the windscreen wipers broke halfway into the journey. Antony’s landlady seemed kind-hearted, though, and cooked them an ‘excellent dinner’ when they arrived. Myrtle was pleased to see how well her youngest was settling into his digs. ‘He looks so well, big and manly, evidently the cold North country suits him,’ she wrote in her diary. She was less impressed by their trip the next day to nearby Harrogate, the spa town. ‘Once affluent Harrogate has been taken over by the government and all the residents of the lovely hotels turned out at a few hours’ notice, many had been resident in the one hotel for 20 or 30 years,’ she wrote. ‘Great curative spa ruined for a senseless bureaucracy. The hotels remain empty, not being used for the purpose which was intended. There should be many questions asked about the panic administration of this country.’

  By then, Britain and Germany had been at war for almost two months, but the much-feared air raids had still not begun, and all remained quiet on the Western Front. Many of the children who had been evacuated to the countryside had begun to make their way home. By mid-October as many as 50,000 mothers and children had returned; a month later the figure had more than doubled, putting a strain on the education system in London and other large cities. Many school buildings had been taken over by civil defence and few had adequate shelters. The government struggled to maintain morale. The popular perception of a ‘phoney war’ or ‘Sitzkrieg’ was at its height.

  ‘Just gardening and cooking, it’s strange how one can go on in the same rut day after day without boredom,’ Myrtle wrote that November in her diary, which she filled with descriptions of flowers tended and vegetables harvested. She also started doing work for the Australian Women’s Voluntary Service Committee, which was set up to help the growing number of the country’s troops arriving in Britain.

  Her and Lionel’s frequent trips to the theatre and cinema continued, as did bridge and dinner parties with friends, often accompanied by a bottle of champagne. Lionel’s connections and renown also meant the chance to meet new people – among them William Hillman, an American foreign correspondent who had been based for a time in Berlin, whom they invited round for dinner. ‘He was so interesting,’ wrote Myrtle. ‘He has known Hitler and his gang since 1929 and talked so interestingly about them. Val came out also and was thrilled.’ They ate a brace of pheasant that had been given to Lionel by a grateful patient.

  Despite the deceptive calm at home, the war at sea was now beginning in earnest, with devastating results: in the early hours of 14 October the German submarine U-47 succeeded in penetrating the defences at Scapa Flow in Orkney, off the extreme northern tip of Scotland, which, because of its great distance from German airfields, was to serve as the main British naval base during the war. The U-boat’s commander, Günther Prien, fired his first torpedo at the Royal Oak, an elderly battleship with 1,234 men on board. After scoring a hit, Prien turned to make his escape, but, realizing there was no immediate threat from British surface vessels, returned to make another attack. The second torpedo blew a 30-foot (9-metre) hole in the British ship, which flooded and sank within just thirteen minutes. Some 833 men were killed, many of them as they slept in their hammocks. Few of those who escaped survived the freezing water. Others were rescued but succumbed to their wounds. More than a hundred of the ship’s complement were ‘boy sailors’, teenagers who had been assigned to the British fleet before they became ordinary seamen at the age of eighteen.

  One of five Revenge-class battleships built for the Royal Navy during the First World War, the Royal Oak was slow, outdated and no longer suited for front-line duty. But its sinking was a major blow to morale and showed the ability of the German navy to bring the war to British waters in a base that had been thought impregnable to submarine attack. Prien became a celebrity in Germany and was the first member of the Kriegsmarine to receive the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. ‘Horrible news of Scapa flow with 810 dead,’ Myrtle wrote in her diary. ‘It seems too horrible to be true.’

  The King had been in Scapa Flow a few days earlier on a trip that also took him to Invergordon. The visit will have brought back memories of his own naval career more than a quarter of a century earlier: days before Britain declared war on Germany on 3 August 1914, the battleship HMS Collingwood, on which the then Duke had been commissioned, had been sent to Orkney. His service record had not been an especially glorious one, however: after just three weeks he began to experience violent pains in his stomach and suffer difficulty with his breathing; he was diagnosed with appendicitis and sent to Aberdeen for surgery. He subsequently returned to his ship and took part in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916. But he endured repeated stomach problems that were eventually diagnosed as an ulcer, and by July the following year, ill once more, he was transferred ashore to a hospital near Edinburgh. Reluctantly he accepted that, after eight years of either training or serving in the navy, his naval career was over. ‘Personally, I feel that I am not fit for service at sea, even after I recover from this little attack,’ he wrote to his father.12

  On this occasion, the King travelled up to Scotland aboard a special bulletproof train that set off from Euston Station in conditions of utmost secrecy. Police guarded all the approaches as he boarded at platform six; another engine with empty carriages drew alongside to shield him from view. Neither the driver nor the fireman knew their final destination as they steamed out of the station. Once on board, the King and Queen were able to relax in some comfort. The train had every conceivable comfort including air conditioning, coach-to-coach telephones, electric fires and a mechanical cushioning system to reduce vibrations. The royal couple had a coach each, fitted with a lounge, dining car, sleeping cabins and bathrooms, as well as accommodation for their respective valet and maid.13 It was in this manner that the King was to travel some 52,000 miles during the war, often accompanied by the Queen, meeting and encouraging his subjects.

  With the outbreak of the conflict, the Palace moved swiftly onto a war footing: many members of the royal household departed for military service, while large numbers of those who remained were transferred to Windsor Castle. Guards and sentries appeared in khaki and steel helmets, while members of the household dressed in khaki and blue uniforms. The finest pictures and other artworks were stored underground in Windsor – as were the Crown Jewels – and display cases emptied of miniatures, gems and porcelains. Skylights were painted black, windows covered and the great cut-glass chandeliers in the state rooms at Windsor lowered to just three feet above the ground to reduce the impact if they fell. The carriage horses in the Buckingham Palace Mews were put to work on farms.

  The King’s two younger brothers joined the war effort: Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, aged thirty-nine on the outbreak of war, joined the British Expeditionary Force and was appointed Chief Liaison Officer. Prince George, the Duke of Kent, a stylish and fastliving thirty-six-year-old who had been due to become Governor General of Australia that November, went instead to the Admiralty. Several members of the royal household also took up war duties.

  For the King himself, the outbreak of war brought new duties and responsibilities. He was not just head of state but also Commanderin- Chief of the armed forces of Great Britain and of the Empire. Although with no formal powers as such, he had the monarch’s right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn his government. To help him fulfil this role he was given numerous briefings by the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet containing large amount of sensitive military information. He was also one of the few people allowed access to Ultra, the intelligence derived from the cracking of the Nazis’ Enigma code. In Buckingham Palace he kept a chart showing aircraft production and losses. ‘The King took a very great interest in things – people talked to him and he could make his poi
nts,’ recalled Lieutenant General Sir Ian Jacob, military assistant to the war cabinet.14 The king nevertheless found his role frustrating. ‘I wish I had a definite job like you,’ he wrote to his distant cousin, Louis Mountbatten, captain of HMS Kelly and commander of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla in October 1939. ‘Mine is such an awful mixture, trying to keep people cheered up in all ways, and having to find fault as well as praising them.’15

  War or no war, the State Opening of Parliament was due to take place on 28 November. There had been speculation that, for reasons of security, the King would not appear, with the government’s programme read out instead by Viscount Caldecote, the Lord Chancellor. In the end, it was decided the King should take part after all. To help him prepare, Logue went to the Palace that morning. He arrived at 10.30 and was shown upstairs to a large room. There was no one in it, but through the half-open door of the King’s study, he could hear the monarch going through the speech.

  At that point, the Queen, who had been in the room listening to her husband rehearse, caught a glimpse of him.

  ‘Oh, here is Mr Logue,’ she said.

  Logue bowed over the Queen’s hand and congratulated her on a speech, the first of the war, that she had made to the women of the Empire on 11 November, Armistice Day. The Queen had been reluctant to make the broadcast at first but had faced multiple calls to do so and eventually agreed. She proved herself an effective speaker. Listeners wrote to the BBC full of admiration. Reith, the former Director General, reportedly called it ‘one of the best broadcasts that have ever gone out to the world’.16 Now Logue added his words of praise.

  ‘She blushed like a school girl and told me that she was so nervous at the start that she hardly knew what she was saying,’ he recalled. ‘I told her that I had almost written to congratulate her, but that I was shy about it.’

  ‘I wish you had,’ she replied.

  ‘I will next time,’ replied Logue.

  The Queen put her hand on heart. ‘I hope there never will be a next time.’

  ‘You can never tell,’ chipped in the King.

  ‘Anyway, if I do have it again, I will get you to hear through it first,’ the Queen said to Logue, laughing, and added: ‘Now I must leave you two and go and get dressed.’

  The two men went through the speech. ‘A good effort, despite the fact that the redundancy of words is dreadful,’ was Logue’s verdict afterwards. He timed their run-through – eleven minutes exactly – and wondered how long it would take the King to deliver it. Logue was not going to be in parliament to hear the result of his work, but one of the equerries promised to call him at 2.15 to let him know how it had gone.

  The State Opening of Parliament is the occasion for a great show of British pageantry. The previous year, in accordance with tradition, the King and Queen had set off from Buckingham Palace aboard a golden coach, their path to parliament lined with cheering, flagwaving crowds. This year, by contrast, the royal couple arrived at the Palace of Westminster by car and with the minimum of retinue; the King wore the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, with the Imperial Crown carried by a senior naval officer; the Queen was in velvet and furs embellished with pearls against the cold. The peers in attendance wore morning dress or military uniform rather than their robes. The speech itself, which in peacetime would have set out the government’s proposed legislative programme in some detail, was short and to the point: ‘The prosecution of the war demands the energies of all my subjects,’ the King began. The text gave nothing else away besides telling MPs that they would be asked to make ‘further financial provision for the conduct of the war’. It had taken the King thirteen minutes to deliver the speech, two minutes longer than during their run-through, and he had hesitated four times.

  A few days later, on 4 December, the King travelled to France to inspect the British Expeditionary Force. A gale was blowing in the Channel, but no sooner had the warship nosed out of the harbour than he walked to the bridge, where he remained for the entire one-and-a-half-hour crossing. ‘The King earned the admiration of the Royal Navy by his magnificent conduct on one of the worst Channel crossings for weeks,’ wrote Bernard Gray, the Daily Mirror’s reporter with the force.17 ‘The deck below was frequently awash as the man-of-war buried her nose in the swirling waves. The King... stood serene and calm, revelling in the battle against the elements’

  During his stay of just under a week he met Lord Gort, the Commander- in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force, as well as the French President, Albert Lebrun, the Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, and General Maurice Gamelin, Gort’s French counterpart. The British press noted that the King would be stepping ashore almost exactly twenty-five years after his father had paid a first visit to the front during the First World War. It was, according to Gray, to be ‘the most democratic royal visit ever made’. ‘He will tramp through the mud just like [the troops] do. He will see their trenches, their forts, their guns. And, equally important, how they live.’18 The King’s visit gave a much-needed morale boost both to the British troops and to the French. The weather was already bitterly cold. Three months after the start of the war there had been little action on the Western Front. There was tension between British High Command in France and the government in London, and Anglo-French cooperation was under strain.

  The King returned to London to the welcome news of the sinking of the Admiral Graf Spee, the German ‘pocket battleship’, in the Battle of the River Plate in Argentina. The ship, which had taken part in his Coronation Review in 1937, had been sent to the South Atlantic in the weeks before the outbreak of war to be in position in the merchant sea lanes. By December it had sunk nine vessels but was confronted by the British cruisers, the Ajax, Achilles and Exeter, on 13 December. The German ship inflicted heavy damage on the three but was damaged and forced to put into port at Montevideo. Hans Langsdorff, its commander, was convinced by false reports that superior British forces were approaching and scuttled his ship. The news of the vessel’s loss was a major morale booster for the British cause. ‘The Graf Spee is our sole topic,’ Myrtle wrote in her diary.

  The next day, 14 December, was the King’s birthday. Along with his birthday greetings, Logue sent him a couple of books he thought he would like, in accordance with a practice he had begun more than a decade earlier (and would continue until the King’s death). Logue did not record the books’ titles in his diary but told the King he thought he would find them both ‘very light and very entertaining’. That afternoon he was invited to the Palace to discuss the King’s upcoming Christmas message. While he was waiting to be summoned, Lord (Stanley) Baldwin came in, walking with a stick. They got into a discussion about the sinking of the Graf Spee, in the course of which Logue noticed how deaf the former Prime Minister had now become. When Baldwin was sent for and limped out the room, Logue was struck by the realization of the extent to which he and Ramsay MacDonald, whom he had succeeded at Number 10 in 1935, were ‘the two men responsible for all the troubles we are going through’.

  Logue was received by Alan Lascelles, the King’s assistant private secretary. The grandson of the 4th Earl of Harewood and a product of Marlborough College and Trinity College, Oxford, Lascelles had been associated with royalty since 1920 when he was appointed assistant private secretary to Edward, Prince of Wales – the same year Hardinge had started work for George V. Although initially an admirer of the future King Edward VIII, Lascelles – known to his intimates as Tommy – swiftly became disillusioned with his poor work ethic and even poorer morals. He resigned in 1929, declaring ‘I have wasted the best years of my life,’ and went to Canada as private secretary to the Governor General, only to be persuaded by George V to return in 1935 shortly before his death. Such was Lascelles’s sense of duty that he remained in his post for Edward VIII’s brief reign, but he was far more comfortable serving his successor, whose sense of duty matched his own.

  Lascelles told Logue the King would make his broadcast from Sandringham, where he and the Queen had decided to spend the Christm
as holidays. Their daughters would come down from Scotland to join them. It had been three months since they had seen the princesses and their reunion was to be a joyful one. The family – or ‘us four’ as the King called them – had always been a close one, its warmth a contrast to the stultifying formality that had blighted his own childhood. ‘There was something unique about the King’s home life,’ said Princess Alice, who as the wife of the Duke of Gloucester was to observe several generations of the royal family. ‘The four of them made a small, absolutely united circle. They shared the same jokes and they shared each other’s troubles.’19

  The prospect of having to address the nation on Christmas afternoon nevertheless cast a shadow over the festivities. ‘This is always an ordeal for me & I don’t begin to enjoy Christmas until after it is over,’ the King wrote in his diary.20 Wood, the BBC sound engineer, learnt this for himself one Christmas Day when a younger member of the Royal Family was trying unsuccessfully to interest the King in some event when he suddenly exclaimed: ‘I can’t concentrate on anything because I’ve got that damned broadcast coming up this afternoon.’21

  What was to become a beloved national tradition that has endured to this day had been initiated by his father, George V, in 1932. Seated at a desk under the stairs in Sandringham, the monarch read out words that had been written for him by Rudyard Kipling, the great imperial poet and author of The Jungle Book. He spoke again in 1935, less than a month before his death, reflecting not just on his Silver Jubilee but also on two other major royal events of the year, one joyous, the other sad: the Duke of Gloucester’s marriage to Alice and the death of his sister, Princess Victoria. The broadcasts, which were mildly, but not overly, religious in tone, were intended to cast the monarch in the role of head of a great family that embraced not just the United Kingdom but also the countries of the Empire.