King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ told French that the King wanted his son ‘to gain practical experience of the vast machinery employed in the conduct of a Campaign’. He was to be attached to the various sections of the headquarters and to attend talks with the Chief of Staff – ‘You will find him an attentive, silent listener, absolutely reticent and discreet.’²⁴ This was not at all how the Prince saw his future, and Thomas observed that he was in a notably bad temper when he had to put aside his normal regimental kit and don the staff uniform with red tabs and cap to match;²⁵ but he comforted himself with the thought that once in France it would surely be possible to get to the front. The most serious danger seemed to be that the fighting would be over before he could be in the thick of it. His comments on the progress of the war were resolutely optimistic. ‘Those bloody Germans are fairly getting it in the neck and no mistake,’ he told Jack Lawrence on 20 August,²⁶ and a month later assured his aunt Alice: ‘It really looks as if the allies were getting a proper grip of the situation and that the German downfall has commenced.’²⁷

      With the declaration of war the Germans had become unequivocally ‘bloody’, guilty of ‘savage barbarism’²⁸ and ‘infamous conduct’; ‘As for the Emperor’s conduct, words fail me!!’²⁹ When words did fail him, he filled the gap with obscenities. Writing after gas had just been used he told his friend Houston-Boswell: ‘One can’t be surprised at anything those German buggers do. One really can’t believe we are fighting European christians … I am a great advocate of the principle of taking no prisoners or as few as possible!!’³⁰ Godfrey Thomas commented on the Prince’s propensity at this time to use bad language and tell filthy stories: ‘It is a phase that most people go through at their public school and I hope that it has merely come a bit late in his case and that he’ll soon get out of it.’³¹ He did, but in the years that followed his escape from the Palace he felt bound to emphasize his independence by larding his diary and letters to his contemporaries with the more conventional expletives.^*3

      The Prince’s arrival in France, General Lambton told the King, had given universal pleasure: ‘I will try to keep him well occupied and as far from shells as possible.’³² In this sentence were encapsulated the Prince’s two principal causes for woe over the next eighteen months – indeed, for the duration of the war; he was kept far from shells, he was not well occupied. The latter was not the fault of French or Lambton. A stray and untrained second lieutenant in supreme headquarters will inevitably be at a loose end and overworked senior officers cannot always be inventing tasks for him. If he had not been the Prince of Wales he might have been of modest use at the most menial level; if he had possessed a forceful personality and administrative skills he might have worked himself into a position unjustified by his rank; but he was the Prince, he was far from forceful, his skills were limited. ‘It’s a pretty rotten life for me,’ he complained to Thomas. ‘I feel I’m the only man out here without a job, and it’s true; thus I am but an onlooker in uniform, and become less like an officer every day.’³³ To have been an orthodox ADC to French would at least have involved regular duties, but the King felt it was improper for the Prince of Wales to act in such a role.³⁴ Instead he was in attendance but with no real function: ‘I merely sloped along astern, looking a bloody fool and very much in the way.’³⁵

      Occasionally he was given some proper work to do. Once he was allowed to use his German in the interrogation of prisoners. The peasants were the most ready to talk, and, even if taciturn originally, could usually be persuaded to tell all they knew by a show of amazement at their ignorance. The more educated prisoners he found ‘all lie, and one can’t blame them’. In such a case the approved technique was to give the prisoner a good meal with plenty of wine. This loosened his tongue. ‘Rather a beastly idea, perhaps, but still it is necessary.’³⁶ He hoped that similar work would follow, but it never did. When, very occasionally, he found himself doing something useful, his gratification was obvious. In March 1915 he reconnoitred the defences around Le Quesnoy. ‘The work is really rather responsible,’ he told his father proudly, ‘as it is v. necessary that the staff should have detailed information …’³⁷

      Stamfordham urged him not to admit to the King that he was bored and under-employed lest he found himself called back to England. ‘You are so terribly keen and full of “go” that you wish always to be doing something …’³⁸ More cheeringly, Desmond Fitzgerald insisted that he was always doing something: ‘You have little idea what an enormous amount of good you do and how much everyone admires and loves you.’³⁹ But it was not the sort of love and admiration the Prince wanted. Shortly after his arrival he was made to inspect some Indian troops. He accepted that his visit had done wonders for their morale but, ‘I hated this, as I haven’t come out for that sort of thing.’⁴⁰ French was restrained in his use of the Prince as popular figurehead, but he knew well that ‘that sort of thing’ was what the Army wanted.

      Hospital visiting was another valuable service. ‘It pleases the men and shows you take a sympathetic interest in their welfare,’ George V told his son.⁴¹ The sympathy was real, and though the Prince felt he should be playing a more valiant role, the warmth and generosity of his nature ensured that the memory of his visits was cherished by all those who experienced them. There is a story, often recounted, of the occasion when the Prince noticed that one patient had been segregated behind curtains. He asked why, and was told that the man had been so fearfully mutilated that it was thought better to keep him out of the way. The Prince insisted on seeing him, stood by his bed, then leant over and kissed him. Lady Donaldson in her admirable biography, properly sceptical of such picturesque but unsubstantiated anecdotes, dismissed it as apocryphal.⁴² It does sound too good to be true. But many years later Gordon Selwyn, the chaplain of the hospital and later Dean of Winchester, told Shane Leslie how well he recalled the scene. ‘Remember,’ the Dean said, ‘men have gone to heaven for less. Never can we forget that action.’⁴³

      Keeping on good terms with the French was another way the Prince could help significantly. He was frequently despatched on liaison visits to French headquarters. The reports which he drafted on his return were of slight value. The cavalry were ‘not bad riders … but they are about the worst horse masters in the world!!’; the officers were markedly inferior to their British counterparts: ‘They are brave enough and some of them very capable, but they don’t possess that personality or refineness [sic] which the British officer does, giving the latter complete control over his men, who will generally respect him and follow him anywhere!! How can this ideal state of affairs be reached when frequently the officer is of much lower birth than some of his men?’ In spite of this, he concluded in some surprise, ‘discipline in the French army is good one would say’.⁴⁴ But what mattered was not his somewhat jejune judgment of the French Army but the impression he left behind him. ‘I only hope I did some good,’ the Prince wrote to his father … ‘I went out of my way to be civil and always called on any general or senior officer at any place I passed.’⁴⁵ Staunch republicans usually make the most fervent royalists and the French military warmed to their shy, friendly and unassuming visitor. ‘Il a su ravir tout le monde par sa simplicité, sa bonne grace et sa belle jeunesse,’ wrote General Huguet. ‘Il sait par ses charmantes qualités gagner les coeurs autour de lui.’⁴⁶ Huguet was an anglophile; more remarkable was the notoriously rebarbative and anti-British general who, after a visit by the Prince, admitted reluctantly: ‘Il parait que parmi vous autres, il y a quand même des gens civilisés.’⁴⁷

      But this was not why he had come to France. Endlessly he reproached himself for the comfort and ease of his existence, compared with the rigours of ‘the poor people in the trenches. I fear this is going to be a very soft life.’⁴⁸ His initial impression of Sir John French was good – ‘he seems a charming man, so human’ – but he could not say as much for the rest of the staff; ‘a d—d uninteresting crowd and no mistake’.⁴⁹ In a less atrabilious mood he would admit that it was not so much that the staff were boring as that they were twenty years older than him. At GHQ a colonel was small fry; young men of twenty were unheard of. Osbert Sitwell, СКАЧАТЬ