by Anne Edwards
Neither of the sisters ever considered the nursery contingent as servants. The war years and their inbred life at Windsor had bonded them. Crawfie did not have the same close relationship as Bobo did with Lilibet or Alah and Ruby with Margaret. She had her own life, a room of her own, dined with the rest of the Household staff, and had another home and family whom she often talked about and visited.
The sisters had lived nearly four years at Windsor. The isolated, sheltering influences had kept them unsophisticated and naïve. Apart from the first three years of their father’s reign when they had been young children, they had not experienced the glitter of palace life in peacetime; nor had they had to suffer the extremes of wartime. The war had not yet taken any member of their family, although they had learned that several of the Grenadier Guards formerly posted at Windsor had died at the front and Clive Wigram’s son was killed in action. Then, in the spring of 1943, the Royal Family suffered its first casualty. The Duke of Kent, still young at thirty-nine, was killed in an air crash in Scotland. The family was overcome with grief. The tragedy seemed all the greater since the Duke had left Marina with three small children, the youngest, Prince Michael, a baby of seven weeks. Philip went down to Coppins when he could to console Marina, and it was arranged that Lilibet should leave Windsor from time to time to do the same.
Footnote
*See genealogy.
9
The summer of 1943 was bright with hope. The war in North Africa had been won. Confidence rose with the heady idea that once a landing of combined forces was made in Europe, German resistance would collapse. By June, American forces had attacked the Aleutians, the Solomons and Sicily. Spirits soared. In the United States the war began to look like a movie: “Brave Americans dashing across the blue Mediterranean and up golden Sicilian beaches to plant the Stars and Stripes among a grateful populace.” But the war was not over and in London the flying bombs—“those beastly V2’s exploding out of nowhere”—brought new terror to an already besieged city.
On his return to London after “a spell of the glitter of New York life,” Cecil Beaton wrote: “I was stunned to see such wreckage to poor inoffensive streets which contain no more important a target than the pub at the crossroads. Miles of pathetic little dwellings have become nothing but black windowless façades. Old, torn posters hang from scabrous walls, the leaves on the trees have changed to yellow under a thick coating of cement powder.”
Windsor Castle was built on chalk and the reverberations from the explosions in London, despite the distance, could be felt underfoot. Nonetheless, the occupants felt extremely lucky. There had been many near bombings and V2 explosions, but, miraculously, Windsor was so far unscathed. All the same Lilibet and Margaret were beginning to show the strain. When V2s buzzed through the air overhead, “conversation would break off ... there was something so fiendishly odd about them—they were so utterly inhuman, like being chased by a robot.” Their daily routine remained unaffected, except that they would “from time to time, take refuge under [a] table, and retire into corners away from glass windows.”
Outings were rare: riding lessons at the small nearby village of Hollyport, and the most anticipated excursion—tea with the Duchess of Kent and her children at Coppins timed to coincide with Philip’s visits. Marina would entertain an envious Margaret, while her sister toured the gardens with her towering Lieutenant. In August the family gathered at Balmoral for six weeks, a welcomed reunion. The danger of attack remained, but the natural beauty that abounded, and the freedom they had to enjoy it, put any such thoughts out of their heads. Lilibet liked to shoot and had excellent aim; the sisters rode, played golf, and picnicked during the day. Charades remained Margaret’s favorite game. But there was always a giant jigsaw puzzle set up on a table, and Lilibet was excellent in putting together the most difficult pieces. For youthful companionship, the Grenadier Guards stationed at the Castle were available for reels and Scottish dancing in the evenings.
Lilibet was more reserved than Margaret and never quite entered into the full spirit of these evenings. She believed she was in love. Philip’s picture accompanied her wherever she went; and although she never confided her feelings (except, perhaps, to Margaret), most people in the Castle had little trouble guessing that she was infatuated with her third cousin, Prince Philip of Greece.
Philip was stationed in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where he lived in rooms at a small hotel for which he paid the grand sum of six guineas a week—over half of his pay—traveling to his office at the North-East Shipyard on the bus. Few people knew that he was a Royal Prince, and no one would have thought that the tall, ash-blond young man who looked so Scandinavian was Greek. In the style of royalty, he used no surname, and would sign whatever was required of him simply—Philip. In truth, because of the Danish passport that had been issued to him, he was Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (the Danish Royal House, which also had German roots). In the Navy he was referred to as Lieutenant Sonderburg-Glucksburg, the more German names having been struck off at his request.
Mountbatten sent a letter to the King at this time asking him to help Philip obtain British citizenship. The King replied to the effect that it was not quite that straightforward. Greece’s turbulent political situation and Philip’s family ties to Nazi Germany made things rather complicated, but he would put the issue into the proper hands.
Philip’s direct German connections through his three brothers-in-law caused him and the Navy some unrest. Whether this tie with the enemy had kept Philip in home ports is a moot point. Philip was ready to go to sea again whenever asked. At the present he was waiting for the Whelp, the new destroyer to which he had been assigned, to join the 27th Destroyer Flotilla of the Pacific Fleet, then fighting the Japanese Navy off Burma and Sumatra.
Mountbatten played a large part in getting Philip his commission and was the prime force in the campaign to help his nephew obtain British citizenship. There is a likely chance that as Supreme Allied Commander in South-East Asia, he was also responsible for Philip being posted to the Whelp. Had Philip remained in England, the King looked certain to apply what pressure he could to break up the relationship between Philip and Lilibet. With Philip on active service, such a move would be ill-received if it made the popular press. Not realizing how important the young man had become in his daughter’s life, the King did not anticipate that old adage—“absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Mountbatten could not have been sure of this either, but he was confident that action on one of the fronts would add a certain luster to Philip’s résumé.
Cecil Beaton was requested to take the photographs for release that would mark Lilibet’s forthcoming eighteenth birthday. His description of his day (in November 1943) at Windsor gives an unusually vivid portrait of life at the castle at this time. A Palace car drove him down from London. Because a van delivering coal blocked the entrance at which he should have arrived, he was “taken to the servants entrance and got a glimpse of the vast underworld of scullions, maids filling ancient looking water bottles and creating an almost medieval effect of bustle* ... we walked for miles along corridors to [Lady Hyde] the [Queen’s] Lady in Waiting’s sitting room—a fire burning in the grate—Victorian chintz—a radio, an historical novel ... the corridors were icy. We passed rooms where the flowers are arranged [masses of chrysanthemums] ... offices with leather boxes on the tables and the distant smell of a cigar.”
He describes the State rooms as “magnificently ornate with tremendous doors—brocade on the walls and a wealth of gilt,” but the temperature “arctic.” The gothic landing of one of the main staircases was chosen as a setting for the pictures. “The Princesses,” he noted, “looked quite pretty in nondescript dresses—but they did not seem to have had their hair freshly washed [Lilibet’s was more golden than he had thought].... [However,] they lasted through a long day’s photography with tact, patience and even a certain gaiety.”
He also observed, “When the Queen is present [Princess Elizabeth] is mo
st silent,” and added, “We had not started to take the pictures before the Queen walked out of her bedroom wearing a short tight banana coloured dress with a large cape of fox fur.... She exudes a wonderful feeling of leisure and is never, never hurried ... the King was in a good mood [dressed in hunting clothes]. With him the Queen is miraculously clever—always handing him the stage.”
The King had instigated a new plan to have a young war hero, for a period of three months, take the position of King’s Equerry as a rest from active service. Wing Commander Pelly Fry was the first war hero to be engaged and he joined the Royal Family, Lady Hyde, Beaton and the artist Gerald Kelly (“who,” Beaton comments, “has been in the household painting one bad picture after another for the last 4 years. Everyone groans at his continual presence but seem incapable of ousting him.... I was amused to see how [the courtiers] behaved casually but with a surfeit of Ma’aming and Siring and yet Kelly kept his elbows on the table—blinked through his spectacles and aired his views”).
As Lilibet’s eighteenth birthday approached, rumors circulated within the Court that her engagement to Philip was soon to be announced. Inevitably, it reached the members of the Royal Family and in March 1944 the King wrote his concerned mother: “We [the Queen and myself] both think [Lilibet] is too young for that now as she has never met any young men of her own age.... I like Philip. He is intelligent, has a good sense of humour and thinks about things in the right way.” But he did not not believe that Lilibet had anything more than a teenage crush on the Viking-like Lieutenant, which seemed quite natural in a girl of her youth and naïveté.
Although the war turned in favor of the Allies, it still dragged on. The common feeling was that the Germans could not hold out past the next spring but that seemed far away and would be no comfort to the men wounded, killed or taken prisoner before then. Wing Commander Pelly Fry had returned to his company and on February 16, 1944, a tall, slim, exceptionally good-looking, twenty-nine-year-old fighter pilot, Group Captain Peter Wooldridge Townsend, replaced him. He possessed a memorable face, the kind that stood out in a crowd. It had more to do, perhaps, with an attitude than anything else. His flinty gray-blue eyes had a directness, a kind of magnetic hold when he was engaged in conversation. He spoke with significant pauses, his words sounding well-considered; and his smile, slow to appear, gave him a small-boy-who-just-ate-the-pie look.
Townsend was unlike anyone in the Court and had little of the courtier in his makeup. Nor did he share much similarity to his predecessor, who was no less valorous, but whose personality was somewhat flat and whose appearance was not outstanding. Townsend bore a resemblance to the humble, gentle, intelligent and singularly heroic characters that James Stewart and Gary Cooper portrayed on the screen. He was fiercely dedicated to King and Country and the men under his command believed he was a superb officer, never harsh or rude, always interested in the welfare of everybody. Whatever decisions he was called upon to make were carefully considered and there was nothing his men might be subjected to that he would not have personally endured.
Townsend became a legend, famed for his bravery as well as for an aerial dance he used to do with his squadron mate Caesar Hull, “each flying and rolling his own plane in wild, airbourne pirouettes while they shouted rumba rhythms at one another over the radio.” Yet Townsend was not looked at as in any way flippant. “I never once heard him raise his voice, and yet everybody instantly obeyed him,” remembers one of his sergeant pilots. “He was a meticulous organizer, and as far as I know he never forgot a detail.”
He had been shot down twice, once over the North Sea, where he was rescued by a trawler, and again when he bailed out of his bullet-riddled Hurricane. During the Battle of Britain he led every fighter patrol in his squadron except one against the enemy. He had received numerous medals, including a Distinguished Service Order and two Distinguished Flying Crosses won for gallantry. In one battle, his small squadron of a dozen planes attacked two hundred and fifty German aircraft over the Thames estuary, forcing the enemy back. He had flown over five hundred missions and one of the fighter squadrons under his command was the first to shoot down one hundred enemy aircraft (“with remarkably few losses”). He was credited with personally shooting down eleven enemy aircraft, but gave up counting in the Battle of Britain when, as he said, “If I led my squadron of 12 head-on into an enemy formation of which 40 were downed, each of us 12 were allowed ⅓ of an enemy aircraft destroyed!” Several times his plane became seriously damaged and he was wounded.
“Death,” he believed, “was never very far away, a few minutes maybe, or a few inches, so it was all the more exalting to be alive. Though [members of my squadron] dwindled steadily, no one believed that he would be the next to die ... the Luftwaffe, by sheer weight of numbers—four to one in their favour—was wearing us down: we [the RAF fighter pilots] were weary beyond caring, our nerves tautened to breaking-point.... [One day] the Germans attacked in the middle of our hasty lunch. Their bombs all but hit us as we roared, full-throttle off the ground. The blast made our engines falter. I never felt any particular hatred for the German airmen, only anger. This time though, I was so blind with fury that I felt things must end badly for me. But I was too weary and too strung up to care. For a few thrilling moments, I fenced with a crowd of Messerschmitts. Then, inevitably, one of them got me. My poor Hurricane staggered under the volley, my foot was hit. Down I went, muttering: ‘Christ!’ then jumped for it. I fetched up in a mass of brambles, feeling rather foolish.”
He almost lost his foot. The doctors managed to save it, but had to amputate his big toe. After three weeks in hospital he returned to his squadron, which had been withdrawn from the front line and sent north. “My wound prevented me from walking, but not flying, so when I arrived at our new base, Church Fenton, in Yorkshire, I took the precaution of going straight to the hangar, where I was helped into a Hurricane. Then, I took off. When I reported to the doctor, he told me gravely: ‘It will be some time before you fly again!’ ‘But, I’ve just been flying,’ I replied and he said no more.”
One of the Group Captain’s former junior pilots, Hugh Dundas (who, himself, was to become one of the youngest group captains in the war), recalled seeing him “standing in the doorway of the officer’s mess ... one of his feet was bandaged.... He spoke kindly and naturally” but he did not mention his recent injury. Despite it “he was flying operations every night, and at that point I developed an immediate hero-worship for Peter Townsend. I soon learned I wasn’t the only one. You often read of an officer during the war who ‘inspired others.’ Well, Townsend was an excellent walking and flying example.”
A short time later Townsend crashed after a night operation. Miraculously he escaped with what he considered minor injury. The base hospital had no antibiotics and he was moved to another hospital, and then, when he had recovered sufficiently, “invalided to a ground job: Training Command. After a few months I begged to return to flying but for answer was sent further north ... for a flying instructor’s course ... the day I received my instructor’s ticket I felt I had reached the nadir of my misfortunes ... I had been cut off from the people and the places which were so familiar, exiled, deported to Siberia. Probably I would never be heard of again.”
A request to report to the Chief of the Air Staff fortuitously arrived. When he did, he was told, “If he didn’t find the idea particularly revolting, he had been picked as a temporary equerry to the King.” Nothing in Townsend’s present or past life had prepared him for what seemed on the surface to be an outlandish suggestion.
Townsend’s father, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Copleston Townsend, a doctor’s son, had been one of an army of ten thousand men sent to Burma by Queen Victoria in the 1800s, when he was not yet twenty-three, to police her newest acquisition. “Men like my father,” Townsend says, “lived lonely lives in oudandish places. They were forbidden to marry until they reached their thirties. They administered vast territories practically from the back of a horse; their power, with
in its limits, was absolute but rarely abused. They were picked men, devoted to improving the lot of the ‘natives,’ often too zealously for the latter’s liking.” Edward Townsend had married, at forty-two, the attractive Gladys Hatt-Cook, a young woman twenty years his junior, who had been invited by her uncle (a friend of Lieutenant-Colonel Townsend) to Burma and been “swept off her feet.” For the next ten years they lived in Burma, where Peter was born at Rangoon on November 22, 1914, the fifth of seven children.
Three years later his father retired and the family took up residence in Devon, where his father’s spinster sister, “Aunt Edie” (Edith Townsend), helped with the care of the large family. “She would have us down to the drawing room to sit in front of the fire and read us stories,” he recalled. “I forget them all except the one about the brave dog which saved a wounded British soldier from the Germans [during the First World War]. We looked at pictures ofthe Germans and the sight of them in their pickelhaube[n], plus the constant threat of my nanny: ‘If you’re naughty I’ll give you over to the Germans!’ instilled in me a lasting fear of the teutonic race. If it was not the pickelhaube[n] it was the black Maltese cross, which seemed to me an emblem of terror, until in World War 2, I met hordes of them in the air. Then, inexplicably, my fear vanished.”
The Townsends were a close-knit, happy family, although the children viewed their aging father with some awe. On Sundays, seated in a massive red-leather armchair in his book-lined study, he taught his family their catechism. Peter formed a triumvirate with his two older brothers, Michael (“a rather naughty boy with a fierce and sometimes perverse defiance of authority .... I needed Michael [Townsend explained] and have always needed people like him; I lacked his cool courage, mine only coming with the heat of action”) and Philip (a nervous youngster who “developed a stammer which hampered him cruelly all his life”).
