The King's Speech (27 page)

Yet the war still had some time to run. The Germans were putting up fierce resistance both in Italy and on the Russian front, while the Japanese were a long way from being defeated. Churchill, overoptimistically, told the King he thought the Germans might well be beaten before the end of 1944, but feared it might take until 1946 to secure victory in the Far East.

The King was keen to take advantage of the improving situation to visit his victorious armies in the field and congratulate them on their achievements. He had made such a trip before, in December 1939, when he visited the British Expeditionary Force in France, but the situation had deteriorated so badly in the meantime that there had been no thought of a repetition. In June 1943, however – travelling incognito as ‘General Lyon’ for security reasons – he set off on a far more ambitious two-week trip to North Africa, during which he inspected British and American forces in Algeria and Libya. On his way back, he also made a brief visit to the ‘island fortress’ of Malta whose highly strategic position in the Mediterranean had earned it a battering from the Germans. Everywhere he went, he received a predictably enthusiastic reception.

Logue, by contrast, was living the ebb and flow of the Allied forces’ fortunes vicariously through the experiences of his sons. Laurie had been first to be called up, in 1940, and was serving in the Royal Army Services Corps. Thanks to the experience of the catering industry he had acquired while working at Lyons, he was put in the branch of the corps responsible for transporting food. He was sent to Africa, where he served in the ‘Gideon Force’ under the eccentric Colonel Orde Wingate, which in May 1941 helped drive the Italians out of Ethiopia and restored Haile Selassie to the throne. In February 1942 he was promoted to second lieutenant and, a month later, was mentioned in dispatches. By June, he had made lieutenant.

Next to be called up was Tony. After just a year of medicine at Leeds University, he joined the Scots Guards in 1941 and, following a spell at Sandhurst, went to North Africa. Valentine, meanwhile, was pursuing his medical career on the home front: after a spell in general surgery, dealing with the victims of the Blitz, he switched in 1941 to the demanding and rapidly developing field of neuro-surgery. He was sent first to a hospital in St Albans, where he specialized in head injuries, and then on to Edinburgh.

Logue, himself, now aged in his sixties, was too old to serve in the forces, but he did work three nights a week as an air-raid warden. His health was beginning to suffer: in August 1943 he went into hospital to have an operation on a stomach ulcer. The King, who was having his traditional summer break at Balmoral, was kept informed of Logue’s progress by Mieville, who also arranged for him to spend some time by the sea to convalesce. On 23 October Logue wrote to the King: ‘I rejoice to say that I am quite recovered, and I am looking forward to attending on you on your return. It has been a long three months. As it is the first ulcer I have ever had, I did not take to it too kindly, but I thank the Good Lord that everything has been a great success.’

The war brought financial as well as medical problems: the young men who made up the overwhelming bulk of Logue’s patients had, like his own sons, been called up into the armed forces. The constant aerial bombardment during the Blitz also dissuaded others from making the trip to London for a consultation. For that reason, a gift of £500 that the King sent him in January 1941 – ‘a personal present from His Majesty in recognition of the very valuable personal services you have rendered’ – was especially welcome.

‘That you with all your great responsibility and worry should thank me and help me so naturally has overwhelmed me,’ a grateful Logue wrote back. ‘My humble service has always been at your disposal, and it has been the great privilege of my life to serve you . . . Your kindly thoughtfulness has touched me many times, and my sincere and heartfelt wish is that I may be spared to serve you for many years.’

One-off gifts, however welcome, were not enough to solve the Logues’ financial problems. Their big house on Sydenham Hill was also turning into something of a burden. ‘Beechgrove has been terribly hard to keep going, as there is no labour,’ Logue complained in a letter to Myrtle’s younger brother Rupert in June 1942. ‘Myrtle has no servants at all, and we cannot even get a man to help cut the lawns, so a house with 25 rooms, and 5 bathrooms these times is a bit of an incubus, and as I am not allowed to use the motor mower but have to use the heavy old “push” one, I would not like to say how big the corns on my hands [are].’ So they got a sheep to keep the lawn down instead.

Logue’s work with the King did not bring just financial rewards: on the eve of the coronation he had been made a member of the Royal Victorian Order; in the Birthday Honours List of June 1943 he was promoted to the rank of commander. The investiture was held on 4 July the following year. He was also honoured to be appointed as the British Society of Speech Therapists’ representative on the board of the British Medical Association – although, as he wrote to Rupert, ‘I only wish these things had come 20 years ago, when one could enjoy them so much more. I am 62 and find I cannot do the things I once could.’

There were expressions of gratitude, too, from some of the patients, letters from whom are included among Logue’s papers. A fifty-three-year-old civil servant named C. B. Archer, from Wimbledon, south-west London, wrote on 30 November 1943 to thank Logue for completely curing him of the stammer from which he had been suffering since the age of eight, apparently through teaching him to breathe abdominally. ‘It was a lucky day for me a little over six months ago when I first got into touch with you,’ Archer wrote. ‘I think only a stammerer can really appreciate what a different world I live in now. It is as if a load has been lifted from my mind.’ The man’s letter, running to five hand-written pages, gave an insight into the blight that the stammer had cast over his professional as well as his private life.

‘My stammering has been a terrific drawback to me in the civil service,’ he continued. ‘Otherwise I should probably have been an assistant secretary by now. All promotions are as a result of interviews by a Promotion Board and you imagine what a sorry show l made in front of them.’

The following month, Logue received an especially effusive letter from a Tom Mallin, in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, noting how both his mother and his friends had noticed the difference since he had started consulting Logue. ‘My friends all say I have “changed” – yes – but for the better,’ Mallin wrote. ‘Now I begin to realise that the voice can be so beautiful, satisfying and expressive, it is a wonder I haven’t tumbled to it before . . . Sir, how can I ever thank you for making me happy?’ He was due to go to an interview a couple of weeks later, ‘and I will remember everything you have taught me. I will be sure of impressing them’.
⁸⁷

The war, in the meantime, was moving towards another of its decisive turning points. On Thursday 1 June 1944, at 9.30 p.m., Logue received a call from Lascelles, who had been promoted to the King’s private secretary after the rather abrasive Hardinge had been effectively forced out in July 1943. ‘My master wants to know if you can come to Windsor tomorrow, Friday, for lunch,’ he asked. Logue was happy to oblige.

Logue took the 12.44 train. Lascelles, whom he met in the equerries’ room, was in a very serious mood. ‘Sorry I cannot tell you much about the broadcast,’ he said. ‘It is, as a matter of fact, a call to prayer, and takes about five minutes, and strange as it may seem, I cannot tell you when it is, as you have probably guessed that it is to be given on the night of D-Day, at nine o’clock.’

Logue went off to have lunch with the equerries, the ladies-in-waiting and the captain of the guard, and afterwards, the King sent for him. He was in his study with the blinds drawn down – but the room was still extremely hot. He looked tired and weary and told Logue he wasn’t sleeping very well. But when they went through the speech, Logue was charmed by it. He timed it: five and a half minutes precisely.

Lascelles had not had to explain what he meant by D-Day. The military terminology for the day chosen for the Allied assault on Europe had long since passed into common parlance. But when – and where – that assault would take place remained a closely guarded secret. The element of surprise was essential if the Allies were to succeed, and they had gone to extraordinary and ingenious lengths to feed disinformation to the Germans.

It had been seventeen months earlier, at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, that Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed on a full-scale invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe using a combination of British and American forces. Churchill, who was keen to avoid a repetition of the costly frontal assaults of the First World War, had proposed invading the Balkans, with the aim of linking up with Soviet forces and then possibly bringing in Turkey on the side of the Allies. The Americans preferred an invasion of Western Europe, however – and their view prevailed. The decision was confirmed at the Quebec conference of August 1943. The operation was named Operation Overlord, and by that winter the choice of landing point had been narrowed down to either the Pas-de-Calais area or Normandy. On Christmas Eve, General Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF).

Plans for the operation were outlined by Eisenhower and his commanders at a meeting held on 15 May in a classroom of St Paul’s School – the unusual venue was chosen apparently because General Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group, to which all of the invasion ground forces belonged, had been educated there. In the days that followed, more and more forces were concentrated in southern England; the invasion was imminent.

D-Day was initially tentatively set for 5 June, but the weather that weekend was poor: it was cold and wet and there was a gale blowing from the west and high seas, all of which would make it impossible to launch landing craft from larger ships at sea. Low cloud, meanwhile, would prevent Allied aircraft from finding their targets. The operation required a day close to full moon; one was due on that Monday. Delaying for nearly a month and sending the troops back to their embarkation camps would be a huge and difficult operation and so, advised by his chief meteorologist of a brief clear improvement in the weather the next day, Eisenhower took the momentous decision of going for 6 June.

Hours later, Operation Neptune – the name given to the first, assault phase of Operation Overlord – began: shortly after midnight, 24,000 British, American, Canadian and Free French airborne troops landed. Then, starting at 6.30 a.m. British Double Summer Time, the first Allied infantry and armoured divisions embarked along a fifty-mile stretch of the Normandy coast. By the end of the day, more than 165,000 troops had come ashore; over 5,000 ships were involved. It was the largest amphibious invasion of all time.

That evening at six o’clock, Logue arrived, as arranged, at the Palace; he was shown in to see the King fifteen minutes later. The speech was scheduled for nine o’clock and the atmosphere was tense. But there were also some comic moments: just as Logue was taking the King through his voice exercises, they caught sight out of the window of a procession of five people in the garden of Buckingham Palace, among them a policeman. As they watched, the woman put a net over her head, which made Logue think they were trying to coax a swarm of bees into a box. ‘The King got quite excited, and wanted to go out and give them a hand,’ observed Logue. ‘It only wanted me to say yes, and he would have opened the window and gone on to the lawn – but it wouldn’t do to have the King chance being stung by a bee just before a broadcast, so curious as I was I had to pretend that I was not interested.’

After trying the speech through once, they went downstairs to the air-raid shelter. Logue was fascinated by it. ‘What a beautiful place,’ he wrote. ‘It would do me as a residence – full of peculiar furniture and the latest ideas for heating and light.’ Wood of the BBC was also there.

They ran through the text; it went well: the speech ran to five and a half minutes, and they needed to make just two alterations. The only problem was the loud ticking of a clock, coming from the King’s bedroom, which had to be silenced for fear of it spoiling the broadcast.

After they had finished, they returned to the King’s room – and he went immediately back to the windows to see what had become of the bees. The people had all gone, leaving behind a small box. As Logue was sitting making small changes to the speech, the Queen came in, and to his amusement, the King ‘explained like a schoolboy, what had happened about the bees, even going down on his knees to explain the detail of the capture’. The Queen also became excited, and said, ‘Oh Bertie, I wish I had been here.’

That evening, as Britons gathered around their radios, the King spoke:

Four years ago our nation and Empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy with our backs to the wall, tested as never before in our history, and we survived that test. The spirit of the people, resolute and dedicated, burned like a bright flame, surely, from those unseen fires which nothing can quench.

Once more the supreme test has to be faced. This time the challenge is not to fight to survive, but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause. Once again, what is demanded from us all is something more than courage, more than endurance.

The King went on to call for a ‘revival of the spirit, a new unconquerable reserve’ and to ‘renew that crusading impulse on which we entered the war and met its darkest hour’. He concluded with a quote from verse 11 of Psalm 29: ‘The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace.’

The speech perfectly fitted the national mood. While the front pages of the newspapers the following morning carried graphic accounts of the landings, the leader writers reacted with pride at what was seen as a chance for Britain finally to reverse the indignity it had suffered four years earlier at Dunkirk. The King received a number of letters of gratitude that touched him deeply – none more than the one sent by his mother, Queen Mary. ‘I am glad you liked my broadcast,’ he wrote in reply. ‘It was a great opportunity to call everybody to prayer. I have wanted to do it for a long time.’
⁸⁸