The Queen Mother (97 page)

In October 1940 Neville Chamberlain, who had suddenly fallen gravely ill and had had to resign from the War Cabinet, was near death. The King and Queen drove to visit him. Chamberlain was very touched, and his wife Anne wrote to the Queen to thank them for their characteristic kindness.
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Chamberlain died on 10 November; Churchill was a pallbearer at his funeral and was generous in his tribute in the House of Commons, saying that all Chamberlain’s noble hopes for peace had been disappointed and cheated by a wicked man.
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Although by the autumn the threat of imminent invasion had receded, London was still under constant attack. The King and Queen’s first married home in London, 145 Piccadilly, was destroyed. Kensington Palace was bombed and then a land mine exploded just opposite Buckingham Palace in St James’s Park, blowing out all the windows and frames in the front of the Palace. By now there was scarcely a pane of glass left intact – the windows had to be boarded up with
cardboard.
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The Queen was dismayed that the beauty of Georgian and Regency London was being smashed – and concerned that the eventual rebuilding would be without taste. (She was right.) ‘It really makes one wild with rage to see all the insane destruction of beautiful & often dearly loved buildings.’
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She wished the German Embassy had been bombed instead. ‘I believe the interior had been made very vulgar by that horrible Ribbentrop, & it would have been no loss.’
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In Stoke Newington in mid-October 1940 the King and Queen watched as people were being dug out of flats which had collapsed upon them. The horror was compounded by the fact that a bomb had burst a water main and many who survived the bombs were then drowned. She and the King knew that such expeditions were essential, but ‘I do
hate
these visits so desperately Mama,’ she wrote to Queen Mary. ‘I feel quite exhausted after seeing and hearing so much sadness, sorrow, heroism and magnificent spirit. The destruction is so awful, & the people too
wonderful
– they
deserve
a better world.’
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She was determined, however moved or upset she was, not to show her emotions. ‘Sometimes even Chief Constables wept, but she never broke down,’ one lady in waiting said.
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But the Queen felt it all intensely. ‘It makes one
furious
seeing the wanton destruction of so much,’ she wrote to her sister May. ‘Sometimes it really makes me feel almost
ill.
I can’t tell you how I
loathe
going round these bombed places, I am a beastly coward, & it breaks one’s heart to see so much misery & sadness.’
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In their visits around the city, there were often air-raid warnings ‘and I think we must have taken refuge in every single police station in London. We were always given a cup of very, very strong tea.’ On the trips around the country, they lived a lot on the train and when it stopped at night she would walk up to the cab to chat with the engine drivers – ‘they were nearly always the most delightful people, great characters, with proper engines. Such nice men.’
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She tended to wake early in those days and to lie in bed worrying. She thought of all the blows that had already befallen Britain and all those which could still come. But she had hope. ‘We have had to take such great reverses, as only a truly great people can take disasters, and possibly so much disappointment & horror will steel our people, & take them to great heights of sacrifice and courage.’
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She also felt, as many did, that the war was bringing out the best in people. Before the
war materialism held sway, but now, as she wrote to Queen Mary in October 1940, ‘the people are living a truly Christian life – being good neighbours & living for each other as never before; which,
with
the things of the spirit, seem to me to be real Christianity.’
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The national ordeal continued. In November 1940 British aircraft sank most of the Italian fleet at Taranto, and then the Eighth Army drove the Italians out of Egypt and most of Libya. But it was a false dawn. Hitler sent Lieutenant General Rommel and the Afrika Korps to North Africa and Rommel reversed the British victories, threatening the Allied oil supplies in the Middle East. The second six months of the real war were, if anything, worse than the first.

In December 1940 Lord Lothian, the British Ambassador to Washington, died
en poste
of food poisoning. A Christian Scientist, he had refused to call in a doctor. He had been a superb ambassador, a friend of Roosevelt for twenty-five years, and was admired throughout America. It was imperative to replace him quickly and within a week Churchill chose Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary. The King and Queen were both sorry to see Halifax and his wife go – the Queen found Dorothy Halifax, still one of her ladies in waiting, ‘a real pillar of strength’, but she felt sure the Americans would like and admire them as much as she and the King did.
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She was right.

The second Christmas of the war came. The royal Christmas card that year was a photograph of the King and Queen standing in the bomb-damaged Palace. The two Princesses took part in a nativity play at Windsor Castle organized by Hubert Tannar, the headmaster of the primary school in Windsor Great Park. Princess Elizabeth was one of the three kings. According to Marion Crawford, she ‘looked like Edward V in her Coronation Crown and tunic of pink and gold’ as she walked the length of St George’s Hall with her gift to the infant Jesus; Princess Margaret took the part of a child whose gift was herself, and sang ‘Gentle Jesus’ at the crib.
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Her proud father recorded that she ‘played her part remarkably well & was not shy’. He was overcome by the emotions the play evoked. ‘I wept through most of it. It is such a wonderful story.’
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On 27 December they motored up to Norfolk to have a few days’ rest on the Sandringham estate. The big house had been closed for the duration of the war; surrounded as it was by barbed wire, and with many shrubs and trees cut down on the orders of the King, the Queen thought it looked forlorn and uncherished.
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They now lived in
Appleton, a small house near by which had been the home of Queen Maud of Norway, who had died in 1938. It was a less obvious target for German bombers than Sandringham itself. They were protected by an armoured-car unit and four Bofors guns, and there was a reinforced concrete air-raid shelter in the trees close by. The staff had filled Appleton with carpets and furniture from Sandringham House. It was warm and comfortable and the Queen and her daughters were happy to be there intimately
en famille
. ‘The children are looking quite different already,’ she wrote to Queen Mary in early January 1941. ‘I am afraid that Windsor is not really a very good place for them, the noise of guns is heavy, and then of course there have been so many bombs dropped all round, & some so close.’
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The snow was thick on the ground but the King went out shooting every day and, his wife said, looked much the better for it. The Queen tried to relax.
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In the fresh chill of Norfolk, they could all reflect on the terrible year that Britain had endured. Thanks largely to the encouragement of Churchill and the mistakes of Hitler, Britain had survived – just. The King summed up 1940 in his diary as ‘a series of disasters for us’. But ‘Winston coming in as PM & Labour serving with him in his government stopped the political rot … Then the Blitzkrieg by the German Air Force by day & night against aerodromes & London which we countered magnificently. Civilian defence services & morale of people splendid … The 2nd six months have certainly shown the world what we can stand … Hitler has not had everything his own way.’
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Through Christmas and New Year the air raids over London were particularly destructive. The Queen was ‘enraged beyond
words
’ by the bombing of the Guildhall and many of the other landmarks of the City of London on the night of 29 December 1940.
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That one night of attack caused about 700 fires; fire crews rushed into the City from all over the Home Counties. As well as the Guildhall, eight Wren churches, five railway stations and sixteen Underground stations were damaged or destroyed.
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‘I am beginning to really
hate
the German mentality – the cruelty and arrogance of it.’
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Before returning to London the King and Queen visited many of the airfields in the Sandringham area. Blizzards and ice on the roads made their journeys slow and perilous, ‘and everywhere we arrived there was a “Jerry” overhead! It became quite a joke in the end,’ she wrote to her niece Elizabeth Elphinstone. But it was worth while; she
was, as always, moved and encouraged by the modesty and the calmness of the men she met. She contrasted their calmness with her own fear. ‘I am still just as frightened of bombs, & guns going off, as I was at the beginning. I turn bright red, and my heart hammers – in fact I’m a beastly coward, but I do believe that a lot of people are, so I don’t mind! Well darling, I must stop … Tinkety tonk old fruit, & down with the Nazis.’
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She enjoyed the Sandringham Women’s Institute party where the ladies put on patriotic tableaux. ‘If
only
you could see them,’ she wrote to the Duke of Kent. ‘Dear Mrs Way, as Neptune, glaring furiously through a tangle of grey hair and seaweed, & Miss Burroughs (the Verger’s daughter) as Britannia were HEAVEN. The words were spoken by Mrs Fuller’s cook, who was draped in the Union Jack, and it was all perfect.’
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The prospects in early 1941 – the second year of Britain’s standing alone – were terrible. While the bombing continued, the Battle of the Atlantic became ever fiercer as German U-boats stepped up their campaign to sink the convoys bringing supplies from North America. America was, as always, the key. The King and Churchill had a shared concern to draw the United States more firmly to Britain’s side. Indeed that was one of Churchill’s principal ambitions. It took a long time to achieve.

Churchill had warned Roosevelt as early as summer 1940 that ‘the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.’
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But, despite Roosevelt’s sympathy for the embattled democracy of Britain, it was not easy. Americans were indeed impressed by the courage of the British in resisting Hitler – the radio broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow during the Blitz gained Britain enormous admiration. But the great bulk of the American people, to say nothing of the political class, showed no enthusiasm for being dragged into another European war. When Roosevelt was re-elected in November 1940, the King wrote to say how thankful he and the Queen and all Britons were. The President replied, ‘I am, as you know, doing everything possible in the way of acceleration and in the way of additional release of literally everything that we can spare.’
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But this was provided only on the strictest commercial terms. By the end of 1940 Britain’s orders were already in excess of her gold and dollar reserves, and the country had to promise to liquidate her remaining assets in the United States to guarantee future deliveries.

In January 1941 Harry Hopkins arrived in London as the personal representative of President Roosevelt. The King and Queen met him and the Queen commented that he was ‘very helpful, and all out for our cause. A very nice American.’
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Hopkins thought well of her too; they took cover together during an air raid and he wrote afterwards, ‘The Queen told me that she found it extremely difficult to find words to express her feeling towards the people of Britain in these days. She thought their actions were magnificent and that victory in the long run was sure, but that the one thing that counted was the morale and determination of the great mass of the British people.’
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Hopkins arranged with Churchill a new basis for the purchase of American material, which was intended to make arms and supplies available to governments whose defence was considered vital to the defence of the United States. The Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress on 11 March, gave Britain extended credit, allowing the country to buy equipment, oil and other supplies, which would not have to be paid for until the end of the war. This was as generous as the United States could be, but it meant that Britain was now, in effect, mortgaged to the United States. (The war debt was finally paid off in 2007.)

There was a renewed fear of invasion. The King talked to Churchill about the risks to his family, and to the government. The Prime Minister told him that he planned to stay in London as long as possible. The King knew that he would have to remain with the government – he could not delegate his powers. But the Queen and the Princesses would be rushed to the country.

The Queen had a frightening experience in February 1941. One evening she went into her room at the Castle and a man sprang out at her from behind the curtains and grabbed her ankles. According to her biographer, Dorothy Laird, she said afterwards, ‘For a moment my heart stood absolutely still.’ She understood that the man was mentally disturbed and worried that if she screamed he might attack her. So she said quietly, ‘Tell me about it.’ The man began to recite his troubles – he was a deserter and his family had been killed in the Blitz – and as he spoke, she moved calmly and quietly across the room to ring the bell. ‘Poor man, I felt so sorry for him,’ she said later. ‘I realised quickly that he did not mean any harm.’
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Harmless or not, it was an alarming breach of security. The intruder had been taken on as an electrician from the Ministry of Labour and his references had not been checked. The Office of Works gave him a pass and he was able
to walk straight into the Castle, into the private rooms – and out again. Lord Wigram, who as Governor of the Castle was responsible for security, was horrified and ordered that regulations be tightened.
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