Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey

by The Countess of Carnarvon

  In between battle strategy, Patton was overflowing with wisecracks until he was stopped in his tracks by his ADC’s reaction to Mr Pell the butler. Asked whether he would prefer red or white wine, he responded, ‘I’d like a glass of milk, please.’ A silence descended on the table before Pell smoothly despatched a footman to see to it. Patton directed a powerfully dirty look in his unfortunate ADC’s direction, whereupon the lad went beetroot red, but the General managed to contain his normally forthright language.

  Patton left the UK for France at the end of July. Robert Taylor left Highclere to rejoin his regiment just a few days before. The Battle of Normandy was in full flow; Lieutenant General Montgomery was moving steadily inland. Monty had been transferred from the command of the 8th Army in Italy just before Christmas the previous year and had been put to planning the British ground forces’ participation in the D-Day landings. Now, bolstered by the triumph of D-Day, he and his Army had fought their way stubbornly through Caen and were holding the Germans there as the US 3rd Army pushed its way east. The Germans were being driven back on two fronts, forced into an ever smaller area. True to form, Hitler refused to countenance a retreat when there was still time to avoid disastrous loss of life. The Allies seized the opportunity to encircle the Germans and trap them in what became known as the ‘Falaise pocket’, a scrap of land around the small town of Falaise that was transformed into an inferno of fighting.

  It was a devastating battle. It raged for just nine days from 12 August but those days were a matter of pure survival. Robert was in command of a flame-throwing tank and was called forward to incinerate roadblocks as the Army advanced. The noise was a roaring that he couldn’t stop hearing for hours afterwards; the smoke that was belched back into the tank stained the men’s skin black so that it looked like charred leather. He saw remains of horses blown into trees, of carts and guns in twisted piles, rows of trenches where dead soldiers still seemed to stand and everywhere was the stench of death and exploding shells.

  The tanks were not suited to this type of warfare. Many of the battalions had trained in England on wide, undulating spaces such as the estate at Highclere. The landscape of Normandy was a patchwork of high hedges, orchards and sunken roads. As a tank went steeply up over the crest of a hill it provided an excellent target.

  The pocket was finally closed, after days of brutal hand-to-hand fighting, on 21 August. Approximately 100,000 German troops were left in the area, of which perhaps half managed to escape while the rest either perished or were taken prisoner. Thousands of civilians also died, along with countless horses and cattle. The villages and towns Robert and his regiment passed through were nothing but piles of rubble with blackened tanks lying askew and, everywhere, the bodies of the dead. General Eisenhower was conducted on foot through the area to review the damage two days after the battle ended. ‘Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest “killing fields” of the war … I encountered scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.’

  Falaise was the decisive battle of the Normandy campaign. The Allied armies’ progress was now relentless: Robert was part of the force pushing eastwards through Belgium towards the border with Germany. Patton’s determination to get to Berlin first fuelled his Army’s remarkable two-week dash across Lorraine. But, as one force went east, another smaller one went south towards Paris. The news that the Allied Army had scored a decisive victory sparked an uprising by the French Resistance and, three days later, the 2nd division of the Free French Army swept into western Paris in triumph as the 4th US infantry division cleared the eastern sections. Vast crowds of ecstatic Parisians greeted them, and the following day the Germans signed their surrender as General de Gaulle made his first speech as President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.

  Robert’s unit pressed on in pursuit of the Germans as Operation Anvil began: the invasion of southern France. Many of the troops had been transferred from the Italian campaign, leaving Henry Porchester and his men tightly stretched. Unconditional surrender had been declared the Allied goal more than eighteen months before but, so far, the Germans were showing very little sign of being willing to surrender on any terms. Von Cholitz, the military governor of Paris, was unusual. Most German officers obediently followed Hitler’s orders for counter-attacks and no surrender. As a result the Allies would have to fight for every inch of ground as they pushed the Germans through the battlefields of the First World War, back towards their own borders.

  Morale was high, despite tough fighting, heavy casualties and food and fuel shortages. The speed of the initial Allied advance, combined with the fact that so many ports were out of action, led to huge logistical problems. There were two types of food packs that got delivered intermittently in cardboard crates and were labelled ‘A’ and ‘B’, containing different tinned rations. Robert and his men were grateful for either, but they always kept an eye out for the remains of an allotment where they might find some carrots or tomatoes.

  The other great supplement to army rations was the hospitality of local people. As they made their way northeast through France and towards Belgium, Robert and his troop were met by euphoric and grateful crowds. People came out waving flags, singing their national anthems and offering coffee, champagne—and even, on one blessedly happy occasion, a plate of salty, crunchy chips.

  The whole of Britain rejoiced at the Allies’ wins on the Western Front and the liberation of Paris. On the Eastern Front the Red Army was also pressing towards Germany, liberating Poland as it went. Finally it seemed that victory was a matter of when, rather than if. But the Soviets’ advances were also revealing horrifying evidence that confirmed persistent (and persistently overlooked) stories about a Nazi programme to annihilate Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other so-called ‘undesirables’.

  The first concentration camp to be liberated was Majdenek, near the city of Lublin in Poland. Soviet troops were struck dumb by what they found: barely a thousand skeletal survivors, gas chambers and burial pits. Approximately 79,000 people had been exterminated in its gas chambers and hundreds of thousands more were worked to death and died of disease and starvation.

  Majdenek was the first of dozens of camps that would be liberated over the next nine months. Its discovery was widely reported in the press; Western and Soviet correspondents entered the camp along with the Red Army. H. W. Lawrence, a journalist with the New York Times, wrote, ‘I have just seen the most terrible place on earth.’ Somehow, these reports were not given the full import they merited. The horror and the staggering scale of the Nazis’ Final Solution were impossible for the public to take in, even as more and more evidence built up. It would be many more months before, with Germany’s defeat secured, the world could set about the virtually impossible task of confronting the aftermath of the Holocaust.

  That summer London was struggling to cope with a new German weapon of terror, albeit one on an infinitely smaller scale than the machinery of death in Eastern Europe. On 13 June the first V1 flying bomb was launched towards London from a site on the Pas de Calais coastline, part of a last-ditch attack on Britain. It landed next to a railway bridge in Mile End in the east of London and killed eight civilians. Between then and October, when the last launch site was destroyed by the Allies, more than 9,500 of what the British quickly christened doodlebugs rained down on southeast England, and London in particular.

  The doodlebugs were extremely effective. They were difficult to intercept and destroy in the air and, though their impact was relatively limited, their capacity to inspire terror was not. A great many air-force resources were diverted to trying to shoot them down safely and, meanwhile, the bombs kept falling. Before long Londoners’ nerves were shot to pieces. The only warning of an imminent attack was the bomb’s pulse engine giving out, which meant the thing was about to drop. Everyone, from theatre audiences to schoolchildren to office workers, grew adept at keeping one ear ou
t, first for the trademark buzzing and then for the awful silence. If a doodlebug cut out over your head you had less than a minute to dive into an air-raid shelter and hope for the best.

  On 20 August, ten minutes after Pen had left for work from Catherine’s new flat near Berkeley Square, she heard the dreaded buzzing overhead. She stood still in the street and looked up, scanning the sky. There it was, a chubby, cigar-shaped missile bearing nearly 2,000-pounds’ worth of explosives. It was still moving. Then it stopped. The whistling it made as it fell was demonic. Pen felt its blast and knew it couldn’t have been very far away. It seemed to have landed in the direction of her mother’s flat. She started to run. When she got to Catherine’s street she saw broken glass all over the road but the bomb had not hit. It must have fallen a few streets further on. She rushed upstairs and Doll let her in, trembling. Catherine had been blown right across her bedroom by the force of the blast but remarkably she hadn’t been hurt at all, not even by the shattering glass from her window.

  The three women knew they were lucky and tried to comfort one another, but though Catherine had recovered her calm by the end of the day, Pen was totally unnerved. She went to sleep on a mattress in the corridor for the next couple of nights, away from windows, tossing and turning and unable to relax. When she telephoned her father to tell him of the near escape he was sympathetic and reminded her that she could always come to Highclere. ‘I know it’s pretty bad up there. Poor Jeanne’s driving me mad,’ he added. ‘She’s so nervous from the damn doodlebugs that she’s really quite snappy with me.’

  Things got even worse when the Germans developed the next generation of flying bomb, the V2, which they began to use in September. This flew at such an astonishing speed that it was impossible to shoot down and it fell without any warning whatsoever. It had a longer range than the V1 so it could be launched from German territory, and V2S terrorised London right up until the end of the war. Some 13,000 were fired, day and night, and killed approximately 9,000 people.

  In Italy the Allied armies had been twice depleted: first by the transfer of several divisions to the D-Day landings and then again when men were sent to participate in the invasion of the south of France. In August Henry was asked to liaise with one of the more colourful special military units that worked alongside the remaining forces. Popski’s Private Army, officially known as No. 1 Demolition Squad, was a small force under the command of Major Vladimir Peniakoff. It had been formed in Cairo in October 1942 as an 8th Army special forces unit, tasked with attacking Rommel’s fuel supplies in the build-up to El Alamein. Peniakoff, who gained the nickname Popski because British intelligence operators had trouble with his surname, was a Belgian-born Anglophile and had studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge before enlisting as a gunner in the French Army and serving in the First World War. He was commissioned into the British Army in 1940 and proved himself to be a remarkably skilled and courageous special agent, who left the North African campaign with a Military Cross for his three-month stint behind enemy lines gathering intelligence on Rommel’s fuel dumps. From North Africa he and his men made their way to Italy as part of a special advance party. They specialised in intelligence gathering and clandestine operations and worked closely with partisans, but they could turn their hand to regular soldiering if required and held a section of the Allied front line when the D-Day landings diverted large numbers of troops. Officially they were eighty men, but they acquired a lot of strays along the way including Russian, German and Italian POWs. The international make-up of the unit meant that French was the common language. Henry spoke excellent French so he was tasked with liaising with Popski’s men as the Blues and Royals continued their advance towards Rimini, attempting to break the last line of German defence. The Blues had themselves built up extensive experience of reconnaissance and the two units swapped a great deal of knowledge and information.

  As the Allies prepared to launch their attack on Rimini in late August, the Germans sent a small force into the neutral territory of the tiny republic of San Marino, just southwest of the city. When the Allied attack met with the usual severe resistance, the Indian and British forces, including the Blues, opted to push west towards San Marino, looking for a weak point where they could burst through the line. On 17 September, after a day of fierce fighting, they took control of the hills on the territory’s borders and started to press on towards the territory’s tiny capital city. Henry’s troop was the second to enter San Marino city on 20 September. By the afternoon the German surrender had been secured. Both armies suffered heavy losses in the course of the battle but at least it must have been a relief to be away from the defensive line, in neutral territory, and therefore in an environment free of the booby traps that had been testing their ingenuity and courage for the last six months.

  San Marino was virtually the last action Henry saw. Three days later he wrote to his father to say he had heard ‘some interesting news’. All correspondence was heavily censored, so typically Henry confined himself to asking his ‘Darling Pups’ for news of the family, staff or the racing. He couldn’t divulge any details, but both Porchey and then Catherine, who received a similar letter, intuited that the news their son had heard was good. It was indeed. Half of Henry’s regiment had not been home for four and a half years. It was confirmed that those men and officers would be leaving Italy before the end of October. The question for the other half of the regiment was whether they would be amalgamated with another unit or sent home alongside their comrades.

  At the beginning of October, Catherine received the letter telling her that Henry was coming home. She had been longing for this moment for so long that when it came she could hardly believe it. She started to cry, tears of sheer relief that brought Doll running to her, asking frightened questions. But this time, the news for Catherine was the best it possibly could be. Her boy was coming home. On 10 October 1944, the Blues and Royals boarded the HMT Monarch of Bermuda at Naples; they left port three days later, on Friday the thirteenth. Despite the inauspicious date, the only trouble they encountered was overcrowding. There were 5,000 men and 560 officers loaded onto three troopships and six destroyers and the officers were packed nine to a cabin intended for two. Henry and his friend John Ewart were too happy to be going home to mind. By some miracle the food was excellent and the sun was shining. They had survived one of the most brutal campaigns of the war and had the satisfaction of leaving at a time when the Allies seemed certain to achieve their objectives, not just in Italy but everywhere. With a mixture of euphoria and relief they set about playing bridge with their customary gusto. John was still losing, Henry still winning. Two weeks later they docked at Liverpool and were told they were going straight to Aldershot but would be discharged the following day.

  Back in Italy, Popski and his men were still battling on. In November they took part in the liberation of Ravenna, where Popski was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Two days later he lost a hand to a German grenade. In Belgium, Robert Taylor’s tank regiment was held up in the stalled Allied push towards the German border, waiting for fuel supplies, bracing themselves for the last stage of the war. They knew it would be bloody. The Germans were clearly not going to give up until they had exhausted every resource, every tiny chance to resist what now seemed inevitable. But for Henry Porchester the war was over. He was on his way back to Highclere.

  20

  Celebrations

  On 19 January 1945, three months after his return from the war, Henry Lord Porchester turned twenty-one. His father took the opportunity to throw as lavish a party as was possible in wartime, to celebrate his son and heir’s coming of age. It was held not at the castle but in the Armoury Room in Highclere village; this was a public celebration for the entire local community. There was a buffet prepared by Lord Carnarvon’s chef, a conjuror performing tricks and a dance band that played late into the night. Wine and beer flowed in abundance.

  Lord Carnarvon made a speech saying how lucky he was to live at Highclere
and to have such wonderful friends around him to share his good fortune with. The festivities were shot through with awareness that Henry had been spared, and now the years of sacrifice were coming to an end for the whole nation. There was a heady atmosphere of gratitude, of gladness simply at being alive. Lord Carnarvon’s declaration that ‘the English way of life is a priceless heritage’ was received with cries of ‘hear, hear’ and when he said he was sure his son, as his successor, would ‘keep the lights burning brightly’ there were cheers. Lord Carnarvon appealed for quiet as he had a very special announcement to make. ‘I know you will all be as delighted as we are by the news that Lady Penelope is shortly to marry Captain Gerrit van der Woude of the Grenadier Guards.’ The cheers reached a crescendo as Penelope gazed around at the mass of smiling faces, clearly moved by this outpouring of goodwill.

  The staff and tenants gave Lord Porchester an illuminated address to mark the occasion. He rose to thank them and then asked if they would toast ‘one who was as dear to them as to him’—his sister, Lady Penelope. As everyone rose and held their glasses high, the room brimmed with happiness.

  Of course, the war was not yet over, either at Highclere or in the wider world. The stud had been decommissioned in November 1944 but the bombing run in the valley was still operational, and full of huge craters. Some of them contained live material; the bomb disposal squad was kept busy at Highclere well into 1946. Miss Stubbings and Lord Carnarvon started to lodge claims for damage and to address the dilapidated state of the park roads and the destruction of the stud buildings and paddocks. Porchey knew better than anyone that funds were limited, and accepted that most of the money to put things right would have to be found from the estate’s budget. It was going to be a long time before everything was back to the way it had been.