King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ smile and angry eyes, trying like myself, I expect, to pretend he was enjoying himself’.⁵⁰ The Prince was lonely, and the loneliness was only exacerbated by the constant presence of the officer charged with his day-to-day wellbeing, the middle-aged and portly Colonel Barry. Only when Barry was joined in January 1915 by a young Grenadier captain, Lord Claud Hamilton, was the Prince’s desolation mitigated: ‘He is such a good chap and has done very well in the 1st batt and got a DSO. It is very nice for me having him here.’⁵¹

      The sharpest pain lay in the knowledge that his contemporaries, in particular in the Grenadiers, were dying in their tens of thousands while he sat safely behind the line. Thirty-five Grenadier officers were killed in the fighting at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915: ‘Isn’t it too ghastly to think of …’ he wrote to his closest confidante, Lady Coke. ‘But of course I never went near the fighting; kept right away as usual!!’⁵² Godfrey Thomas got the same complaint: ‘I do hate being a prince and not allowed to fight!!’⁵³ On his birthday Desmond Fitzgerald said that he could not think of any suitable present: ‘The only thing I know of that you would really like, I cannot give you, and that is that you would become an ordinary person.’⁵⁴

      He strove endlessly to get permission to join his regiment, or to serve even for a few days in the front line. Briefly he was posted to General Charles Monro’s divisional headquarters near Bethune, only to be moved back promptly when an attack was imminent. But he did win at least half his point. In February 1915 the King agreed that he might visit the trenches ‘provided that you are with responsible people … I want you to do exactly what other young officers on the Staff do, but not to run unnecessary risks, no “joy-rides” or looking for adventure … I want you to gain an insight into the life they lead in the trenches. I hope now your mind will be at rest and that you will not be depressed any more. You can do anything within reason except actually fighting in the trenches.’⁵⁵ It was something, a great deal indeed, but opportunities for a young officer at GHQ to approach the front line were still few and far between. There are plenty of accounts which describe his hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach. The future Lord Lee wrote that ‘his main desire appeared to be to get either killed or wounded. At intervals he had to be retrieved from advanced trenches and dugouts, whither he had escaped by one subterfuge or another.’⁵⁶ A fellow officer described him complaining he had never seen a shell burst within a hundred yards of him. Claud Hamilton remarked that one had burst nearer than that. ‘Yes, but dash it, I never saw it!’ exclaimed the Prince.⁵⁷ ‘He loved danger,’ said the Rev. Tubby Clayton.⁵⁸

      Clayton’s comment, at least, is nonsense. The Prince never courted danger, still less loved it. He found shelling terrifying and freely admitted as much. General Sir Ian Hamilton denied that he ever flouted his instructions or took unnecessary risks. ‘He did take risks, but they were always in the line of duty. We did worry about him … but not because of any insubordination on his part.’⁵⁹ Whenever he left the trenches to return to headquarters, he did so with relief. But he did so with shame as well. The ferocious battering to which he subjected his body, with a regime of endless walks and runs, a minimum of food and sleep, must have been in part a mortification of the flesh to assuage this conviction of his inadequacy. If he had been able to change places with a subaltern in the most exposed part of the line he would have done so with alacrity, though also with dismay and trepidation. The moans that fill his diary and letters to his friends about his unlucky lot are wearisome to read and seem sometimes overdone. Their constant refrain, however, was that he was being denied the chance to do as his friends and contemporaries were doing and risk his life for his country. He never stopped trying and it is impossible not to feel respect for his efforts.

      His brief sojourn with Monro and the 2nd Division at Bethune included a visit to the Guards Brigade – ‘The best day I have had since I’ve been out, for it was a real treat to be with my brother officers and away from the staff.’ The treat was cut short when Monro decided he was too close to the line and sent him back: ‘It did bring it home to me how wretched it is to be the Prince of Wales!! I almost broke down.’⁶⁰ Shortly after his father’s new dispensation, he got within a hundred yards of the German lines, but heard only a few snipers’ shots. Then, at Givenchy in March 1915, he came under shellfire for the first time and saw the aftermath of a fierce battle: ‘It was a marvellous 2 hrs for me; in my wildest dreams I never thought I sh’d see so much. There are masses of corpses in the open swampy space; a terrible sight.’⁶¹ His excitement was tempered by the horror of the battle. Six officers of the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards were killed in a single day and he felt only relief when a halt was called: ‘The operations of the last two days have seemed madness to me. Just sheer murder to attack now.’⁶² For him it was back to GHQ. ‘I am in the depths of depression, realizing at last that there is no job I can take on out here, so am really the only man who has nothing to do, or anything to work for.’⁶³

      He was inevitably a prime exhibit for visitors to GHQ. Churchill was one of the more regular. Like most immature young men of twenty, the Prince tended to take his opinions from those around him. Regular Army officers viewed Churchill with mingled distrust and distaste. The Prince followed suit. His initially mild complaints at the frequency of Churchill’s visits when he had ‘other and more important work to perform’⁶⁴ became more splenetic and the Minister was categorized as an ‘interfering politician’, bothering the overworked naval and military authorities.⁶⁵ By the time the First Lord resigned in 1915 he had become an ‘intriguing swine’;⁶⁶ ‘Thank God both Winston and Fisher have gone;’ he exclaimed to Godfrey Thomas, ‘the former is nothing short of a national danger.’⁶⁷ On the whole he thought it a good thing that politicians should come out to France ‘to see a few realities’,⁶⁸ but the visits renewed his sense of grievance: ‘Mr Bonar Law arrived last night … and of course went out today with the express purpose of visiting a trench; he will have seen more of the actual fighting than I have in three months!!’⁶⁹

      In May 1915 his ceaseless efforts to get closer to the front met with some success when he was transferred to the HQ of 1st Army Corps, to whose command Sir Charles Monro had been promoted. It was still staff work but, at least, he told Thomas, ‘now I am out a gt deal and never get into a car if I can possibly help it, doing all my work riding, biking or on foot. That keeps me fairly fit …’⁷⁰ The luxury was less oppressive than at GHQ: ‘No tap, no pump, the only source of [water] is from a v. deep open well and it takes 3 mins to draw a small tub!!’⁷¹ Best of all, the work was more satisfying. He was now on the administrative side, concerned mainly with the supply of ammunition. ‘I like this so much better than on the Intelligence branch where I was before as one is dealing with facts and not theories; I’m not a theorist and what I am doing now interests me.’⁷² His new job made him particularly resentful of the shortage of ammunition and other resources caused by the Dardanelles campaign. ‘It makes me sick to think of 10 ruddy DIVS killing old Turks instead of Boches!!’ he told Thomas. ‘That won’t help us.’ The campaign had been a mistake, he told the Marquis de Breteuil, though he reluctantly accepted that ‘une fois commencée, il faut la finir, et vaincre les Turcs.’⁷³

      Oliver Lyttelton met the Prince at 1st Army Corps HQ. ‘He was,’ wrote Lyttelton, ‘the most charming and delightful being that I had ever known.’ The two men were invited by Desmond Fitzgerald to dine with the Irish Guards about four miles away. Lyttelton was relieved at the thought that the Prince’s car would be available but instead found he was expected to bicycle. Worse still: ‘“I never get off,” said HRH, as we faced a mile or two of hilly road. “It is one of the ways that I keep fit.” I was in good training, but after a mile I had sweated through my Sam Browne belt and had begun to entertain some republican inclinations. However, we had a gay and delightful evening: the Prince was happy and in the highest spirits; we replaced our lost tissue with some old brandy, and free-wheeled home to our cage like school-boys.’⁷⁴ ‘The prince eats little and walks much,’ Lyttelton told his mother. ‘We eat much and walk little.’⁷⁵

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