King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ of victory, but signally failed. ‘These continuous heavy casualty lists make me sick,’ he wrote during the battle of the Somme, ‘it all seems such a waste for of course it doesn’t matter if we don’t push on another few miles as regards the end of the war, we only push to kill Huns and help our allies. I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to look on the situation in such a big way; I can’t keep the wretched infantry being slaughtered out of my thoughts.’³²

      It was just before this battle that the Prince went with Cavan’s deputy, General Morland, to see the first ‘tanks’, a code word for ‘these new land submarines’. He was impressed by their ingenuity, admired the bravery of their crews, but was sceptical of their value: ‘They are good toys but I don’t have much faith in their success.’³³ He told his father of his doubts and was duly crushed: ‘With regard to the “Tanks” which you scoffed at when you first saw them …’ retorted the King, reports were so good that several hundred had been ordered.³⁴ The King was proved right in the end, but the performance of the tank in the First World War, at least before the battle of Cambrai more than a year later, did something to support the Prince’s scepticism.

      The progress of the war over its last two years is marked by his ever growing respect for the fighting men; not just for the officers or the Guardsmen but ‘for the British conscript … for he hates the whole thing and isn’t fired with the same spirit as were the first hundred thousand’. And yet they managed to keep ‘so marvellously cheery’ and to prepare for each new scene of carnage with renewed determination. They were marvels, ‘it does make one feel so proud of being an Englishman’. More was being asked of them than had ever been asked of British troops before. And he felt humble as well as proud: ‘No one can realize what these … battles are like till they’ve been in one, and I don’t, as I never have.’³⁵

      He never stopped trying to get forward to the front line, never stopped hating it when he was there. In June 1917 he rose at 4 a.m. to go to the trenches: ‘and how I loathed it!! But frightened tho’ I am, I should honestly loathe it still more if I never went forward!!’³⁶ Shortly before that he told Lady Coke that in recent months he had only once been within range of enemy shellfire since his return, ‘so you need have no thoughts for my safety’.³⁷ The worst danger he had confronted was in October 1916, when he was at the front with General Gathorne Hardy. A shell fell forty yards in front, then one thirty yards behind. Fortunately the German gunners did not complete the bracket: ‘I’ve never been so near becoming a casualty before, though it did me worlds of good, frightening me properly.’³⁸ Four days later they were still more comprehensively shelled. ‘That strafing we got has taught me more than anything ever has during my 2 years out here; it gives me a slight impression of what our men have to go through these days.’³⁹

      Gathorne Hardy was the last person with whom the Prince would have chosen to die; ‘he is so unfair to all his subordinates that I feel ashamed to be out with him!!’⁴⁰ The Prince’s dislike for Gathorne Hardy had started one particularly cold and wet night when the Grenadiers were moving up to the front. A staff officer remarked, ‘Lord, I’m sorry for those poor devils going up.’ ‘Oh well, they’ve got their ground sheets,’ retorted Gathorne Hardy. ‘Pass the port.’⁴¹ The remark probably signified little, but to the Prince it showed unforgivable callousness. His respect for the fighting men would never have allowed him to speak of them so indifferently. Indeed he would never have made a First World War general; he was too soft-hearted, too squeamish, too concerned about the safety and comfort of the men. ‘I’m v keen on the fighting troops being made as comfortable as possible always …’ he told Wigram. ‘Poor devils, they have a bloody enough time in the trenches … they are absolutely marvellous and I’d do anything for them.’⁴²

      As a weapon of war, he rated the aeroplane far ahead of the tank. Early in September 1917 he visited the Cigognes, the crack French squadron which included Guinemeyer, the ace who had shot down over fifty German planes. ‘They are fine fellows,’ he told Lady Coke, ‘and all gentlemen, to put it snobbishly, which makes such a difference really.’ The visit was of particular interest to him because a few weeks before he had been given permission by the King to go up in an aeroplane himself, provided it was nowhere near the line. He had had his first flight on 17 July: ‘It’s a wonderful feeling up there,’ he wrote, ‘but I don’t feel I ever want to learn to fly.’⁴³ In fact he was soon eager to do so, and though he took no steps to learn until long after the war, he went up quite frequently over the next two years. One account says that his permission to fly was withdrawn because he flew with a Canadian war ace who was photographed piloting the aircraft with one arm in a sling.⁴⁴ There is nothing in the Prince’s diary about this, though in September 1918 he did fly up to 10,000 feet with a Canadian called Barker. ‘It is really the safest thing in the world, far safer than motoring!!’ he told his mother.⁴⁵

      After the exhilaration of flying, he found little to thrill him in the course he did with the Royal Artillery. It seems to have been a pointless exercise; the course was designed for officers who had done a year or more with an artillery battery, and, since he hardly knew one end of a gun from another, he understood nothing of what was going on. The drills were incessant and tedious, the other students uninspiring, the food disastrous. This last at least he could put right, with a weekly hamper from Fortnum and Mason containing a ham, two tongues and a Stilton. ‘You know I attach very little importance to my food,’ he told his mother, ‘and I have always taken the view that most people eat too much … But I must confess that I like the small amount of food that I eat to be good.’⁴⁶ The contents of the hamper were shared out around the mess and the Prince’s departure was a cause for sincere regret.

      At the end of 1916 Asquith fell and Lloyd George succeeded him as Prime Minister. Only six months before, the Prince had told his father that he did not care for Lloyd George ‘as a man, a statesman or anything’ but by December 1916 he had concluded that ‘everyone has gt confidence in him and feels that he is really out to win the war and that he has no thought for himself’.⁴⁷ He welcomed the change, believing that a strong government was essential and that ‘old Squiff’ could never have provided the necessary leadership.⁴⁸ He was particularly gratified that Churchill was not in the reformed government and disgusted when he reappeared as Minister of Munitions six months later – ‘I suppose he has silently wormed his way in again.’⁴⁹ Grudgingly he admitted to the King that Churchill would probably do the job well and ‘perhaps it is safer to give him a job than to have him hanging around unemployed’.⁵⁰

      By this time hopes of a rapid victory had been dashed by the collapse of the Russian empire. ‘Let us hope that the new Govt will get the upper hand and smash the socialists,’ the King wrote to his son in April 1917. ‘I should imagine that a republic in Russia is an impossibility.’⁵¹ To the Prince the blow struck at the allied war effort by the defection of the Russians seemed more catastrophic than the murder of his relatives whom he had hardly met. ‘Oh! this —— war … I feel as if we are in for at least another 10 years of it!!’ The Russian revolution, followed by the crumbling of the monarchies at the end of the war, caused him to think about the future of the British royal family. ‘Ours is by far the most solid,’ he told his father, ‘tho of course it must be kept so and I more than realize that this can only be done by keeping in the closest possible touch with the people and I can promise you that this point is always at the back of [my] mind and that I am and always will make every effort to carry it out … I also feel that we have good reason to be confident of the good sense and calmness of our race, anyhow just now, tho of course one knows there are many and great dangers, and one mustn’t shut one’s eyes to them even if they don’t really become formidable till 2 or 3 years after the declaration of peace when the race will have got over the joy and novelty of “no war on”.’⁵²

      His relationship with his father had been better since his visit to the Middle East, and he wrote in his diary in March 1917 that ‘the parents are more charming to me than ever, and seem glad to see me again’.⁵³ СКАЧАТЬ