The King's War

by The King's War- The Friendship of George VI

  Because of the time difference with Australia, the programme, which went out live, was to be broadcast very early in the morning. A few days earlier, Logue received a letter from Cecil Madden, an executive from the BBC’s External Services, with an unlikely offer: would he like to spend the night before in Madden’s box in the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus? The theatre had been requisitioned during wartime by the BBC; its auditorium, being underground, was an ideal studio safe from the Blitz. From there it was only a short walk to Broadcasting House, which would ensure Logue would be in the studio in good time for the broadcast. ‘It’s a bit unusual and has a mattress and sheeting in it and is in the Upper Circle,’ Madden wrote of his box, ‘but the attendants would look after you very well and call on you with tea in a most baronial manner. It would mean that you would be on the spot.’ It is not clear whether Logue took him up on his offer.

  The programme’s presenter, Joan Gilbert, did not attempt to explain to her Antipodean listeners her guest’s connection with the King, describing him merely as ‘Lionel Logue of Adelaide and for many years of London’. Logue did not refer to the nature of his work either. Instead, in introducing his choices that included ‘Bird Songs at Eventide’ (set by Eric Coates), O Mimì, tu più non torni from La bohème and Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, he spoke about the ‘delicious music’ made by birds in his garden at Beechgrove, his love of opera at Covent Garden – sadly closed for the duration of the war – and his growing taste for the simple music that he had disdained when young. His last choice was ‘I'll Walk Beside You’, a sentimental ballad that had become hugely popular during the war, sung by the Irish tenor, John McCormack. The song, he said, was intended ‘as a tribute to the lass who has stood by my side for thirty-six happy years, and helped me so valiantly over the rough places’. Logue ended the broadcast with a few words to family and friends back in Australia: ‘To my sisters and my brother Herbert, and our multitude of friends under the Southern Cross, our love and regard. And to all those mothers and fathers, whose fighting sons we love to entertain over here and whom we are proud to hail as our kinsmen, our good wishes are with you.’

  Logue seems to have enjoyed his encounter with Gilbert but complained in his diary that making the programme had wasted hours of his time, obliging him to spend the following weekend catching up on his correspondence. ‘The last letter I am writing is to a most charming girl to say how much I appreciated her kindly help last Thursday – and if there was any success it was entirely due to her, and I made my bow and say Thank you very much Miss Gilbert.’

  By summer 1942, the tide of war was beginning to turn in favour of the Allies. Convinced that one more push eastwards would get him into Cairo, Rommel launched an offensive, but was stopped in his tracks by Claude Auchinleck, the British Commander-in-Chief of the Middle Eastern theatre, who had created a formidable defensive barrier around El Alamein. There was good news for the Allies elsewhere too: the Soviet Red Army began a summer offensive that would take them from the Don to the Elbe, while the Americans began to stay the Japanese advances in Asia and the Pacific. On 17 October, Roosevelt wrote to the King: ‘Perhaps I can sum it up by saying that on the whole the situation of all of us is better in the Autumn of 1942 than it was last spring, and that, while 1943 will not see a complete victory for us, things are on the up-grade, while things for the Axis have reached the peak of their effectiveness’.118 The President’s optimism proved well-founded. The appointment of Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery as head of the Eighth Army in August in place of Auchinleck, who had lost Churchill’s confidence by failing to follow up his success at El Alamein, gave new impetus to the Allied effort in North Africa. Montgomery, who vowed to ‘hit Rommel for six out of Africa’, restructured his force and did wonders for morale. ‘I want to impose on everyone that the bad times are over, they are finished!’ he told his troops. ‘Our mandate from the Prime Minister is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa … It can be done, and it will be done!’

  After beating off a German attack soon after his appointment, Monty, as he was universally known, on 23 October launched a successful counter-attack. The Allies had 200,000 men and 1,100 tanks ranged against the Axis’s 115,000 men and 559 tanks, and also benefitted from 300 Sherman tanks that had been hastily shipped to Egypt from America. Rommel was back home in Germany on sick leave, but hurried back to Africa to lead his men. Heavily outnumbered, he warned Hitler on 2 November that his army faced annihilation. The Nazi leader would not tolerate any talk of surrender: ‘It would not be the first time in history that a strong will has triumphed over the bigger battalions,’ Hitler told him the next day. ‘As to your troops, you can show them no other road than that to victory or death.’ The Panzerarmee had already begun to retreat by the time the order was received, however, and at midday on 4 November, Rommel’s last defences had caved in. His remaining forces retreated to Tunisia. Montgomery’s victory proved a turning point in the North African campaign and indeed the Second World War. It was said, with some exaggeration, that before El Alamein the Allies had never won a victory, but after El Alamein they never suffered a defeat.

  Logue was one of the first to hear the good news. That afternoon he was at Buckingham Palace with the King going through the speech he was due to give at the State Opening of Parliament, set for 12 November, when the telephone rang. The two men looked at each other. Such sessions were considered sacrosanct; the King had given orders that he was not to be disturbed unless he was needed urgently.

  ‘Well, this must be important,’ the King said, walking to the table and picking up the receiver. He immediately became excited.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Well read it out, read it out,’ he said, before adding ‘The enemy is in full retreat. Good news, thanks,’ and hung up.

  Smiling, he turned to Logue.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked, and repeated the gist of the news from El Alamein. ‘Well,’ he added. ‘That’s grand.’

  By the time Logue returned home, news of the victory had reached the newspapers; vendors had drawn red, white and blue frames around posters announcing Rommel’s retreat. That evening the King wrote in his diary: ‘A victory at last, how good it is for the nerves.’119

  The Allies kept up the momentum: four days later, on the morning of 8 November, a combined Anglo-American force of more than 70,000 men landed on the coast of north-west Africa, launching what was known as Operation Torch. Planned and supervised by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, newly appointed as supreme commander of North African operations, it consisted of three task forces intended to seize the key ports and airports in Morocco and Algeria, both of which countries were nominally in the hands of the Vichy France regime. The Western Task force targeted Casablanca; the Centre Task Force aimed at Oran, over the border in Algeria, and the Eastern Task Force went for Algiers. Successful completion of these operations was to be followed by an advance eastwards into Tunisia.

  Intended to open a second front in North Africa, this was the first major offensive undertaken on Allied initiative rather than in response to enemy action. It was quickly rewarded with success: Oran surrendered on 9 November and Casablanca on the 10th. The same day Eisenhower struck a deal with Admiral Francois Darlan, the pro-Vichy commander of all French forces in North Africa, making him French High Commissioner. In return Darlan ordered his men to cease resistance and to cooperate with the Allies. Joining forces with such a notorious collaborator with the Germans was hugely controversial, but Eisenhower defended the move as ‘a temporary expedient, justified only by the stress of battle’; the Germans responded by occupying Vichy France. Few tears were shed when Darlan was assassinated a few weeks later by a French monarchist.

  An elated King sent a generous tribute to Churchill: ‘When I look back and think of all the many arduous hours of work you have put in, and the many miles you have travelled, to bring this battle to such a successful conclusion you have every right to rejoice, while the rest of our people will one day be very
thankful to you for what you have done,’ he wrote. Churchill responded in equally effusive manner: ‘No minister in modern times, and I daresay in long days past, has received more help and comfort from the King, and this has brought us all thus far with broadening hopes and now I feel to brightening skies.’120

  The tide was turning, too, in Russia. In August 1942 the Germans launched an offensive to capture Stalingrad and scored initial gains, pushing the Soviet defenders back into narrow zones along the west bank of the Volga River. On 19 November, however, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, a two-pronged attack that targeted the weaker Romanian and Hungarian armies protecting the flanks of the German Sixth Army. These forces were overrun and the Germans cut off and surrounded. Ordered by Hitler to remain, the remnants of the Sixth Army fought on but in February 1943 finally surrendered. Taken together, Stalingrad and El Alamein were to prove a turning point in the war.

  As 1942 drew to a close, Logue’s three sons were all involved in the war effort in different ways: that November, after almost a year based in Wanstead, in north-east London, the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards in which Antony was serving was finally mobilized for service overseas and moved north by train to headquarters in Ayrshire. It was not clear where they would be deployed, but North Africa or India seemed most likely.

  Valentine, meanwhile, was continuing his training as a neurosurgeon and had been promoted to assistant to Wylie McKissock. That November their unit was moved out of Leavesden Hospital and transferred to Atkinson-Morley, a convalescent home in Wimbledon that was part of St George’s which had been equipped with a new operating theatre and lent to them. It was a curious experience for Valentine to return to his former hospital. As he wrote to Laurie: ‘It sounds a fair proposition but I don’t know how long I can stomach walking in the shadow of St George’s.’

  Laurie, himself, had set off at the end of September with his unit for Nairobi – although strict censorship rules prevented him from revealing his destination to his family, whose letters to him were full of speculation about where it might be. They knew it must be warm – which, stuck as they were in grey, wintery London, made them jealous – but nothing more than that. ‘The old lady is still speculating on your whereabouts,’ Valentine wrote to him on 5 December. ‘We have come to the conclusion that the only place you can’t be is Australia … I must say I find England rather dull at the moment, but I hope to see the world myself in the not too distant future.’

  For her part, Myrtle was continuing to help the troops passing through Australia House: by 1942 the social centre had grown into what became known as the Boomerang Club: spread over two floors, it was a place where Australian servicemen could obtain advice about accommodation, have a drink, meal or haircut, play billiards or the piano and catch up with friends – or with news of those who had been killed. The BBC made weekly broadcasts from the club featuring personal messages from servicemen to their relatives back home. Myrtle helped out with the lunches; sometimes they fed between 300 and 400 men a day. She wondered where they all came from.

  Myrtle’s letters to her sons provide an insight into life on the home front, with both its ups and downs. ‘Our poor little sheep was chopped today,’ she wrote to Laurie that November. ‘As you may have noticed, he was a ram and recently has been feeling rather alone. As he is very strong I have been frightened he might bull me from the top slopes. I have to sell him to the Pool and will be able to have a joint off him.’ The other animals she kept at Beechgrove were about to suffer the same fate. ‘The geese are all being chopped for Christmas, probably to feed the hospital opposite – 50% of my rabbits go to the Pool, and I shall be glad to get rid of them, it’s no joke in the winter to find food for them all, and the work is considerable.’

  Christmas meant another royal broadcast. A couple of days before, Logue rehearsed it with the King, whom he found to be in excellent form. The speech itself required a little surgery: Logue didn't like passages that the Prime Minister had written into the text as they didn't seem right coming out of the King’s mouth. ‘It was typical Churchill and could have been recognised by anyone,’ Logue complained in his diary. ‘With the King’s help, we cut out adjectives and the Prime Minister.’

  The weather was fine, despite a touch of fog, and, unlike the previous two years, there was no snow. Logue was again summoned to join the royal family for the festivities. The Christmas tree looked much nicer and better decorated than the year before; to his doting eyes a decoration sent by Myrtle had made all the difference. When the Queen came in, she walked over to Logue and told him how pleased she was to see him. To his surprise, she then asked him to repeat a trick he had been showing a couple of the equerries before lunch: how to breathe using only one lung. Logue happily performed his party piece, during which only one side of his chest expanded as he inhaled, but then warned her and the two princesses not to attempt to imitate him.

  Lunch was a fairly simple affair: turkey, plum puddings and grapes, washed down with beer rather than wine. Just after 2.30, Logue followed the King into his study for a final run through of the speech. At 2.55 they entered the broadcasting room, he and Wood synchronized watches, and at 2.58 the Queen came in to wish her husband good luck. A few seconds later the three red lights went on and, with a glance in Logue’s direction, the King began.

  ‘It is at Christmas more than any other time, that we are conscious of the dark shadow of war,’ he said. ‘Our Christmas festival to-day must lack many of the happy, familiar features that it has had from our childhood … But though its outward observances may be limited, the message of Christmas remains eternal and unchanged. It is a message of thankfulness and of hope – of thankfulness to the Almighty for His great mercies, of hope for the return to this earth of peace and good will.’ Logue followed the printed text for a couple of paragraphs, but then stopped doing so because it was going so well; it seemed all the work he and the King had done together was ‘bearing fruit’.

  The King went on to speak of the great contribution being made to the war effort by the other members of the Empire – and also by America. He ended with a story Abraham Lincoln once told about a boy who was carrying a much smaller child up a hill. ‘Asked whether the heavy burden was not too much for him, the boy answered, “It’s not a burden, it’s my brother’”. The King concluded his speech: ‘So let us welcome the future in a spirit of brotherhood, and thus make a world in which, please God, all may dwell together in justice and peace.’

  After twelve minutes it was over. Logue was delighted by what he had heard. ‘It is a grand thing to be the first to congratulate a King, and letting a few seconds go by to make sure we were off the air, I grabbed him by the arm, and in my excitement said “splendid”,’ Logue wrote in his diary. ‘He grinned and said, “I think that’s the best we have done, Logue. I will be back in London in February, let us keep the lessons going”’. The Queen came in, kissed him fondly and said, “That was splendid, Bertie”.’ Logue left for John Gordon’s house, where he had more turkey, only this time accompanied by champagne.

  The newspapers were impressed, too. ‘Both in manner and in matter, the King’s broadcast yesterday was the most mature and inspiring that he has yet made,’ commented the Glasgow Herald. ‘It worthily maintained the tradition of Christmas Day broadcasts.’ Churchill, the greatest orator of them all, called the King to congratulate him on how well he had done.

  On Boxing Day, the King sent Logue a handwritten letter: ‘My dear Logue, I'm so glad that my broadcast went off so well yesterday,’ he wrote. ‘I felt altogether different and I had no fear of the microphone. I am sure that those visits that you have paid me have done me a great deal of good & I must keep them up during the new year. Thank you so very much for all your help. With all good wishes for 1943.’

  Logue wrote back, full of enthusiasm:

  Your Majesty,

  You certainly have the nicest, and most human way of doing things, as nothing in the world could have been appreciated more, or given
me greater happiness, than your most welcome letter.

  To-day my telephone has been beating a tattoo, all manner of people have been ringing to congratulate you, saying how they wished they could write & let you know how much they enjoyed the broadcast. As I said on Friday, you approached the microphone in quite a different spirit, almost as if it were your friend and never looked like being held up.

  I will be honoured to help the appointments going, and will get in touch when you return to London. In the excitement of Christmas Day, it slipped my memory to say Thank You to the Queen & Yourself for your card & to say how much I appreciate & value it. I thoroughly enjoyed my whole day at the Castle & think it is a wonderful augury for 1943.

  Myrtle was not there to share her husband’s triumph. On 22 December, she had set off for a week’s holiday in Torquay with Valentine, who had been given some free time by McKissock, who was concerned at how hard his protégé was working at the hospital. ‘We had the most lovely weather, warm with no wind, we wore neither coat nor hat and did long walks over the beautiful country,’ she wrote to Laurie on her return:

  It is so lovely down there, very reminiscent of Capri and the French Riviera minus their smells. He [Valentine] danced each night, whilst I played bridge or danced also. I made him visit the spa and have Vichy Baths and a Sun Ray afterwards. And on other days we swam in the indoor pool, which is slightly heated. Tony has written us a good many letters over Christmas but it seems that he will not be home for some time. I am sending on your letter to him to read. I am enclosing one result of his visit to the photographer, not bad is it?

  We killed four geese … the fifth I am keeping until Tony can get home. But she is becoming so tame and follows us around like a dog, so it will be difficult to kill her. We sent a hen and a rabbit to the Waites for Christmas. Did you hear H.M’s broadcast, it was easily the best ever, and your father got the most delightful letter of thanks from him after it was all over. Also got a letter from the Queen’s Lady-in-waiting, thanking me for some decoration I had sent to the princesses for their Christmas tree.