The Queen Mother (14 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
At Glamis she slipped happily back into her role of friend to the soldier patients. Her unaffected curiosity about them and enjoyment of their company are evident from her letters throughout the war. There seems to be no doubt that the experience of welcoming and cheering men from all walks of life and many parts of the world had a major impact upon her – indeed, one can surmise that everything she learned from this stood her in extremely good stead in the life that lay before her. The soldiers were charming, she reported to Beryl, who was away for the summer holidays; and this time there was a sailor among them, to her delight. ‘My dear Miss Poignand, you
are
missing something! One is a fisherman and a Naval Reserve, he has been shipwrecked five times. Blue eyes, black hair,
so
nice. Reminds me of Henry.’
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Another of the new patients was Corporal Ernest Pearce of the Durham Light Infantry, whose right shoulder had been shattered at Ypres in May 1915. Soon after he arrived, he saw a girl in a print dress swinging a sun bonnet in her hand. It was Elizabeth. He thought she had beautiful eyes and found her delightful; whenever he met her in the weeks ahead, he said later, ‘she was always the same. “How is your shoulder?” “Do you sleep well?” “Does it pain you?” “Why are
you not smoking your pipe?” “Have you no tobacco?” “You must tell me if you haven’t and I’ll get some for you” … For her fifteen years she was very womanly, kind-hearted and sympathetic.’
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Corporal Pearce said that everyone in the Castle ‘worshipped’ Elizabeth. For her part, she described Pearce as ‘A most delightful Corporal, nice boy indeed’. His name appears frequently in her letters thereafter, often as her partner in the boisterous games of whist they played in the evenings. He returned to service in 1916 and survived the war; Elizabeth kept in touch with him throughout, helped him in the post-war years and later gave him a job as a gardener which he kept for the rest of his life.
*
There was joy at Glamis in late August 1915 – Fergus came back from France for five days’ leave. It was almost a year since he and Christian had married and their daughter Rosemary had been born on 18 July. But after this holiday he had to return to the Front. Lydie Lachaise, the French governess, never forgot the sadness in Lady Strathmore’s face when he left.
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At the beginning of September Lady Strathmore and David travelled south – David to begin his life at Eton – while Elizabeth went to visit May at Carberry Tower, the Elphinstone family home near Edinburgh. From there she sent her mother a request: ‘Darling Mother, don’t forget, a little white fox neck thing, a really chic hat, the “dernier cri” in shirts & a warm winter coat, the newest mode!!!!!!’
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She replied to a letter from Beryl, who was still in London, with a mixture of low badinage and high politics: ‘Yes, of course my dear Ass, you may call at St James’s Square for your luggage. Please give my best love to the dear B.O. and old goggle eyes …’. Quoting from a letter from Sidney Elphinstone, she continued:
London is full of dreadful rumours … But much the worst is that Kitchener is going to resign, Winston will take his place and Lloyd George will be Prime Minister. But Sidney, who wrote about it, says that he doesn’t think that this long suffering country would stand that, for they have such faith in K of K. I hear the Russians
are getting a much better supply of ammunition now, perhaps they will pick up a bit …
How terribly you would have envied me. I spent the whole afternoon on the shores of the Forth. So near the ships that I could see people. And a conversation with a most beautiful sailor, with blue eyes and black lashes and so good looking. That was yesterday. He pointed out all the ships to me … They looked too fine for words. I simply revelled in ’em. And simply hundreds of beautiful brown Lieutenants, Subs, Snotties [midshipmen], Admirals and sailors. Oh my! They were all most amorous! … Beatty’s fleet I suppose.
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Back at Glamis a few days later she found a ‘fairly cheerful’ letter from David at Eton, and new soldiers – ‘one is a ventriloquist; another has a huge cut across his head and is rather “queer”, no wonder’.
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Then came the news that every family dreaded throughout the war. Only a month after his return from Glamis to the battlefields, Fergus had been killed at the Battle of Loos.
*
F
ERGUS
WAS
a delightful, cheerful and energetic young man, a countryman through and through. He took great pleasure in being on his own, and particularly loved Glamis. He was said to have made friends with two poachers and to have imbibed a great deal of their lore.
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In December 1910 Fergus had become a second lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion The Black Watch, and in 1911 he was sent to serve in the Punjab. He and his mother corresponded frequently and one teasing letter from him to the ten-year-old Elizabeth survives in the Glamis Archives. He wonders whether she has been to Gunter’s tea shop lately, and describes his ideal dinner: ‘1. Buttered eggs 2. Fillets of salmon 3. Roast pigeon (fried potatoes, peas, collieflower) 4. Lamb cutlets 5. Macedoine of fruits 6. Lemon water ice 7. Fruit (peaches, grapes etc) 8. Coffee 9. Probably
very very
sick.’
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Fergus would have been content to remain in his regiment, but by his early twenties he knew that he had to earn more money. In February 1914 he decided, reluctantly, to go into the City.
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But on the outbreak of war he immediately rejoined the Black Watch. Sent to the Front in early 1915, he wrote home about the gas being used by the
Germans. ‘They are fiends,’ he said. ‘These are trying times and I’m sure we’ll all be overjoyed when the war is over.’
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In the spring of 1915 the Germans and Austrians mounted a huge and successful assault on Russian positions to the east. In order to relieve the pressure on their Russian allies, the French decided to attack German lines in Champagne and Artois. The British government was a reluctant partner in this venture – London agreed only for fear that the Russians might make a separate peace. Through the summer the Germans strengthened their positions. Fergus wrote home in June describing the German trenches his troops were facing as ‘quite impregnable – rows & rows of them … & all lined with concrete & with murderous machine guns’.
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It would have been wise to delay an attack. But the British were not even allowed to choose their own terrain; General Joffre insisted that they fight side by side with the French through the ruined villages of Loos and Lens, not in the more open countryside that Kitchener preferred.
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After his brief visit home in August, Fergus rejoined his battalion as final preparations were under way. Despite the season, it was pouring with rain and the trenches were filled with mud. Around 800,000 British and French soldiers were poised to attack on 25 September. General Haig, in command of I Corps of the British Expeditionary Force, wrote in his diary, ‘The greatest battle in the world’s history begins today.’ General Joffre told the French, ‘Votre elan sera irresistible.’
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Not so. The French advanced in Champagne but then were stopped by the Germans. The British, using poison gas for the first time, pushed forward strongly at first, but reinforcements were called up too slowly. One soldier who was there said, ‘Jerry did himself well at Loos and on us innocents. We went into it, knowing no more than our own dead what was coming. And Jerry fair lifted us out of it with machine guns.’ The losses were appalling.
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Private Carson Stewart of the 7th (Service) Battalion The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders recalled: ‘When they took the Roll Call after Loos, those not answering, their chums would answer, “Over the Hill.” ’
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In the early morning of 27 September Fergus was ordered to drive out a party of Germans who had infiltrated a trench by the Hohenzollern Redoubt, a German stronghold which the Black Watch had captured the day before. He and his men, exhausted from the previous
two days and nights of fighting, had only just been relieved at 4 a.m. and were preparing themselves some breakfast when the orders came. As Fergus led his party forward a German bomb exploded at his feet, blowing off his right leg and wounding him in the chest; at the same time he was hit by bullets in the chest and shoulder. He died at about 11.30 a.m.
The news did not reach Glamis until four days later, on 1 October. Lieutenant G. B. Gilroy of the 8th Battalion The Black Watch wrote to Lady Strathmore telling her what had happened and assuring her that her son could not have suffered any pain but must have died instantly.
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Perhaps mercifully, it was several weeks before Lady Strathmore learned that Fergus’s death had been neither instant nor painless. His soldier servant, Lance Corporal Andrew Ross, and Sergeant Robert Lindsay, who had been with him when he died, came to Glamis to see her. Both men, and his fellow officers, spoke of Fergus with affection and admiration.
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Sergeant Lindsay gave her the name of the stretcher bearer who had carried Fergus away for burial; she later wrote to him to ask for details, saying that she planned ‘to go out & try & find his grave when the war is over’.
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The entire community of Glamis was thrown into deep sorrow. Corporal Pearce recalled later that the soldiers all agreed not to go up to the billiard room, to stay off the lawns and not to play the gramophone. They wrote a letter of sympathy to the Countess. She thanked them and said she hoped that, as her guests, they would carry on using the Castle just as before.
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On 3 October 1915 Fergus was remembered in the parish church at Glamis with the words: ‘How hard to realise that all that personal quickening, that lovableness and charm, that brightness and vivacity, that thoughtfulness have passed and gone.’
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Few records of Elizabeth’s reaction to Fergus’s death have survived. She wrote Lavinia Spencer a letter described by her friend as ‘brave’ in her sympathetic reply, which is in the Glamis Archives. Beryl Poignand recorded that ‘poor little Elizabeth’ had managed to remain ‘gay and bright’ when she accompanied the Glamis convalescents to the local picture palace in Forfar soon after the sad news arrived.
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Her writing paper for most of 1916 was black-edged in mourning for Fergus.
A few weeks after the battle Winston Churchill, then a battalion commander on the Western Front, heard a lecture on Loos and wrote
to his wife, Clementine, that it was a tale ‘of hopeless failure, of sublime heroism utterly wasted and of splendid Scottish soldiers thrown away in vain … Alas, alas.’
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Among the many thousands killed at Loos was John, the only son of Rudyard Kipling; his body was never found. The poet wrote of the death of all the young men:
That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness as given …
To be blanched or gay painted by fumes – to be cindered by fires –
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
But who shall return us our children?
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*
L
IFE
ON
THE
Home Front continued. Elizabeth had resumed her lessons with Beryl; she claimed in a letter to Beryl’s mother that she was not doing very well. ‘I am hopelessly rotton at Arithmetic, Literature, Drawing, History and Geography,’ she wrote. Beryl, she added, was ‘really in despair about my exam, you see I’m so frightfully stupid & don’t know anything except what I’ve learnt with her about – Julius Caesar, Napoleon, French History, & a lot of little things about the Gods & Goddesses, Hades etc.’
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At the end of October she and her mother travelled down to London to see David, on his first long leave (half-term) from Eton. It was not the best of journeys – the train was three hours late and filled with troops – ‘my word
how
drunk the sailors were!’ They arrived in thick fog in London, and Elizabeth discussed a new threat – the Zeppelin airships – ‘don’t be surprised if the Zepps come, for they
love
fogs,’ she wrote to Beryl.
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It was a warning with resonance; the Zeppelins inspired real terror and recently five of them had dropped 189 bombs on London and the Home Counties, killing seventy-one people.
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Elizabeth’s attitude remained insouciant. She and David went to see
The Scarlet Pimpernel
at the Strand Theatre. ‘When the
Zepps were last here, they dropped a bomb into the pit at the Strand and killed 6 people so of course we went there.’
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A crisis for Glamis arose just before Christmas 1915 when the medical authorities in Dundee considered closing the hospital at the Castle. Elizabeth and her mother were horrified and went to Dundee to argue their case. ‘I waited outside, trembling, the fate of the hospital was in the balance, but, hooray, its all right,’ Elizabeth wrote. Lady Strathmore had been effective and Dr Fraser at the Infirmary told them that Glamis had done ‘wonderful good work, especially with “nervy” men’ and he would continue to send patients there.
When they got back to the Castle, Nurse Anderson was ‘simply dancing with impatience at the top of the stairs’. The rejoicing was compounded by Jock, who had telephoned to say he was coming home that night. So he did, with a whole group of friends. ‘You can (or rather
cannot
) imagine the row they made in the motor, “Auld Lang Syne” etc. I have just seen Jock (it is about 11.15) he is so happy.’
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The Strathmores again spent Christmas at Glamis, and Elizabeth prepared a tree for the soldiers. They each got presents from the family – an electric torch, a shirt, chocolates and crackers. ‘I believe the noise last night at “lights out” was something appalling, trumpets & squeaky things going like mad,’ she wrote to Beryl. ‘Of course we drank “To Hell with the b— Kaiser” last night.’
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