The Queen Mother (104 page)

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T
HE DEFEAT OF
the Germans and Italians in North Africa gave the King an opportunity he had long sought – to visit his armies in the field. Any such trip made the Queen nervous but she agreed with the King that it was important, and he had not been in the field since visiting the British Expeditionary Force in northern France at the beginning of the war. He discussed the idea with Churchill at their Tuesday ‘picnic’ on 23 March. The Prime Minister favoured the idea.

The King prepared for the worst, leaving instructions that, should he not return, the Queen must ‘take the entire charge of & go through all my personal papers’ which were locked in various boxes in Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Royal Lodge. Only the Queen should read his diaries which should then be placed in the Royal Archives. ‘I do not wish anyone else to read them. My wife will know if there is anything in them which should be used in reference to these days of war.’
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On 11 June the King set off from Northolt aerodrome, travelling incognito as ‘General Lyon’ on a converted Lancaster bomber which Churchill used. The Queen waited anxiously at the Palace. At 8.15 the following morning she learned that the plane had been heard near Gibraltar. An hour and a half later, she was told that thick fog had prevented the plane landing in Gibraltar and it was flying on to Africa. There was then complete silence for more than another hour. She was frightened. ‘Of course I imagined every sort of horror, & walked up &
down my room, staring at the telephone!’ she wrote to Queen Mary soon after she had heard that her husband had landed in Algiers.
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From there the King sent a wireless message to the Queen, ‘Arrived safely after pleasant flight. All well. Lovely hot weather. Interesting programme arranged. Eisenhower and others dined Saturday, others come tonight. Three French generals lunched today. Best love.’
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The Queen replied that she was ‘so
thankful
’ that he had had a comfortable journey. ‘I was very relieved to hear that you had arrived safely … and I am counting the days until you return. I do hope that the warm sun will do you good, and that the change of
everything
will be a real tonic – I am sure you badly need it after these 4 years of grinding work and anxiety.’ Lilibet, she told him, was down with a cold and Margaret had gone to Frogmore to help the Sea Rangers (the nautical section of the Girl Guides) cook their lunch. ‘I think of you all the time, and do pray that you will have a really interesting & not too exhausting time. All my love darling from your very loving E.’
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The King’s journey made the sort of headlines that the Queen loved to see for her husband.
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On the day it was announced, she was almost mobbed by enthusiastic crowds in the East End who swarmed over her car.
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She wrote to tell him that ‘there is great excitement and admiration combined … I don’t like to write too freely as I said before, not knowing what might happen to this letter, but I think of you all the time, & am so happy to know what pleasure you are giving to everybody in Africa, as well as everybody here.’
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The King’s guide for much of the trip was Harold Macmillan, Britain’s Minister Resident at Allied Forces Headquarters in North Africa. Macmillan thought Palace officials had failed to set priorities well, and in particular had done far too little to include the Americans in the King’s trip. He thought this disastrous – General Eisenhower was after all Supreme Commander of the Allied (Expeditionary) Force in North Africa and thus the King’s host.
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Macmillan succeeded in getting the imbalance corrected; in the course of his gruelling two-week trip, the King met Eisenhower, gave a garden party for British and American officers and visited GIs in one of their camps. More time, of course, was spent with the British Eighth Army and the King knighted General Montgomery in recognition of his triumph at El Alamein. Like others with him, the King suffered throughout the trip from what he called ‘Gyppy Tummy’ and he lost nearly a stone, but he was very happy with what he was able to do.
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The most important and most dangerous part of the trip was his visit to Malta. This vital fortress in the Mediterranean had suffered ruthless bombing and blockade by Axis forces for over two years. With astonishing courage the islanders had held out and in April 1942 the King had awarded his personal decoration, the George Cross, to the people and the garrison of the island. This helped the morale of the islanders but their ordeal continued until after Rommel’s defeat. The Battle of Malta was, according to the King’s biographer, ‘one of the most valiant and glorious episodes of the war’. Not surprisingly, the King was determined to go to the island. Equally unsurprisingly, his advisers – and his wife – were nervous about the idea: Sicily, only sixty miles to the north, was still in fascist hands.

The King prevailed. He travelled by sea and by night from Tripoli on the cruiser HMS
Aurora
. Early on the morning of 20 June the news of his imminent arrival was announced on the island. The church bells burst into prolonged clamour and thousands of people rushed to the harbour side to cheer with wild abandon as the King, elegant in a white uniform, stood and saluted in front of the bridge as
Aurora
slowly drew near. The cheering went on and on and, the King told his mother, ‘brought a lump to my throat, knowing what they had suffered from 6 months of constant bombing’.
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The King sent the Queen a wireless message from Malta. ‘All very delighted with my visit … Very interesting & strenuous tour in lovely weather. Hope all is going well at home. Best love to you & the children.’
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Throughout, he was crowded by weeping, cheering people and bombarded with geraniums which stained his brilliant uniform. At the end of the emotional day, perhaps one of the most important in his reign, the Lieutenant Governor, David Campbell, said to the King, ‘You have made the people of Malta very happy today, Sir.’ To this the King replied, ‘But I have been the happiest man in Malta today.’
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While he was away, the Queen acted as Counsellor of State and fulfilled some of the King’s duties. Since the King would miss his usual Tuesday meeting with Churchill on 22 June, she invited the Prime Minister to lunch with her alone. Clementine Churchill wrote on his behalf to accept the invitation and to say that he had given instructions that the Queen be kept fully informed of all events while the King was away.
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The Queen wrote to tell the King that she had only had to sign ‘4 little ERs’ on documents requiring the monarch’s signature and hoped
she had not yet let him down.
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On 22 June she held an investiture at Buckingham Palace. There were several hundred people, mostly servicemen and women, to be awarded their honours. The ceremony took much longer than usual because she spent more time than the King in talking to each of those being honoured.
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Among them were Wing Commander Guy Gibson, aged twenty-four, who had led the Dambusters raid in mid-May in which bouncing bombs were dropped on the reservoirs of the Ruhr to destroy the dams and the hydroelectric power of Germany’s industrial heartland. After completing his own bombing run, Gibson had circled slowly to draw enemy fire from other aircraft doing the run. The losses had been serious – fifty-three of the 133 crew on this mission had been killed.

The Queen already had a personal interest in the Dambusters because at the end of May she and the King had visited their squadron, No. 617, at Scampton in Lincolnshire. There Gibson and Barnes Wallis, the scientist who had designed the bouncing bomb, explained to them how the raid had been conceived and carried out.
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The Queen now took great pleasure in awarding Gibson the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry in face of the enemy. ‘I always felt very proud of that,’ she said years later.
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Gibson, one of the most celebrated heroes of the war, was killed in action in September 1944.

The King had a calm and comfortable flight back from Fez to Northolt, where he landed at 6 a.m. on 25 June, an hour ahead of schedule. Churchill met him and they talked about the trip while they drove together to Buckingham Palace. The King recorded in his diary, ‘I found Elizabeth in bed waiting anxiously for me. It was lovely seeing her again. She had had very little sleep, & it was then only 7.0 am.’
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T
HE TRIP WAS
a great success, encouraging to the troops in North Africa, to the alliance with the United States, to the defenders of Malta, to the people of Britain and to the King himself.

There was just one unhappy consequence. Problems arising from the journey seem to have caused the final break between the King and his Private Secretary, Alec Hardinge, who had served him since he came to the throne. Hardinge was a fine man with many outstanding qualities. He had devotedly served King and country since being appointed assistant private secretary to King George V in 1920. He had acted honourably as Edward VIII’s private secretary, but had quickly
recognized the King’s inadequacies. King George VI had profited greatly from his wisdom and experience as he grew into his role as monarch, and Hardinge had understood much earlier than many people (certainly the King and Queen) the dangers of appeasement. But he was not an easy man, and under the pressures of war his relationship with the King – not easy himself – became strained. The Queen and others in the Royal Family and Household felt that the King needed a private secretary with whom he was more compatible.
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While the King and Hardinge were in Africa, the Queen discussed this and other problems with Tommy Lascelles, the King’s Assistant Private Secretary. Thanking him for his kindness and understanding, she wrote, ‘If I was a trifle
in
discreet – well who better qualified to listen than yourself! It is so important to be able to discuss rather delicate matters in a broadminded and I
hope
balanced way, and there are very few people in this world alas! to whom one can occasionally speak freely.’
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Lascelles wrote in his diary, ‘For some years past I have been the unwilling target of a “Hardinge must go” barrage inside this house [that is, Buckingham Palace], from the King and Queen downwards.’ He said that he had turned a deaf ear to such criticism because he believed that Hardinge’s administrative talents outweighed other considerations. But by now Lascelles had come to realize that Hardinge and the King ‘were so temperamentally incompatible that they were rapidly driving each other crazy’. Hardinge had become more isolated, and less able to delegate; his colleagues, according to Lascelles, found him ‘impossible’.
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This reached a climax at the time of the African journey, when Lascelles considered that Hardinge had failed to give him sufficient briefing or authority to conduct business properly during the King’s absence.
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On his superior’s return Lascelles protested and the two men exchanged bitter letters; Lascelles threatened to resign, prompting Hardinge, who was exhausted and in poor health, to write to the King on 6 July tendering his own resignation.

The King was surprised but relieved. In his diary he noted, ‘I replied accepting his resignation as I was not altogether happy with him.’
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He told Tommy Lascelles he wanted him to become his private secretary. Hardinge was astonished and no doubt upset by the King’s alacrity. Next morning he asked the King point blank if he really wanted him to resign. ‘I told him I did, saying that I was very grateful
for all he had done for me in the last 7 years. It was difficult for me to have to do this but I knew that I should not get this opportunity again. It came as a real shock to him I could see,’ the King wrote in his diary.
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Many members of the Household believed that the Queen had played a large part in Hardinge’s removal. Oliver Harvey, then the Private Secretary of Anthony Eden, wrote in his diary that the resignation of the ‘strong, sensible, progressive minded Private Secretary’ had been ‘largely caused by the Queen who was determined to get him out’.
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Perhaps. The Queen was more aware than anyone of the tension that existed between Hardinge and the King.
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It would have been strange if she had advised the King not to accept the resignation. As ever, she sought anything that could improve the King’s peace of mind.

Hardinge’s wife Helen, who had been close to the Queen since girlhood, was hurt. She wrote to the Queen: ‘I am not distressed about Alec’s resignation which looks right to me but I am sad at what has led to it.’ She said that she had been told by trustworthy people that the Queen had been trying to get rid of her husband for a long time. ‘I do not know whether it is true or not – but if by any chance it should be – Your Majesty only had to send for me and tell me what you thought.’
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The Queen immediately did send for Lady Hardinge, who recorded in her diary of 8 July: ‘Went to see the Queen. She’s very angry at me for believing they could have ill wished Alec.’
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On 17 July the Palace issued a statement saying that Hardinge had resigned on grounds of ill health, and that the King had appointed Sir Alan Lascelles in his place.
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It was to be a close and fruitful relationship. Queen Mary was thankful.
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When she next visited Windsor, Queen Mary thought that as a result of Hardinge’s departure the atmosphere at Windsor had ‘changed completely!’
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D
URING
J
ULY
1943 the Queen inspected ATS units of the London District and Anti-aircraft Command, an ARP first-aid post in Wimbledon, Joint War Organization convalescent homes and Red Cross depots in Surrey. She examined the new County of London Plan for post-war rebuilding (about which she had already expressed misgivings in letters quoted above) and with Princess Elizabeth she went to the Royal Academy. She attended the 1,000th Lunchtime Concert at the National
Gallery, she presented colours to the Royal Regiment of Canada and the South Saskatchewan Regiment, and she visited the Radiovision Factory, in the Euston Road, where she showed special interest in what was called ‘invisible light-ray’, or television development. Arthur Murray, the director who showed her around, was impressed that she understood all the technology he explained to her.
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