Queen's House (47 page)

The Palace Superintendent reported at 2.03 a.m:

Time bomb has smashed many windows. Some of the ceiling in the Queen's small Chinese room is down. Some damage in Empire Room. The Queen's bedroom and boudoir comparatively undamaged apart from windows. Glass skylight over Minister's staircase is down. Swimming pool extensively damaged at end. Crater 15 ft wide where explosion occurred. No-one hurt. Great quantities of broken glass everywhere on that side of the Palace.
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Then on 13 September came a much more dramatic and serious attack. A German bomber drove under low clouds straight up the Mall, dropping a stick of bombs directly on the Palace. It was, as the King wrote to Queen Mary on 14 September,

a ghastly experience yesterday & it was so very unexpected coming as it did out of low clouds & pouring rain at the time. We had just arrived at B.P. from here, & were still in our rooms upstairs. Elizabeth, Alec Hardinge & I were talking in my little room overlooking the quadrangle when it happened. We heard the aircraft, saw the 2 bombs, & then came the resounding crashes in the courtyard. Our windows were open, & nothing in the room moved. We were out of that room & into the passage at once, but we felt none the worse & thanked God that we were still alive …

The door opposite the King's Door did not come down. All the windows were broken in the passage & the 2 full length pictures of the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge were perforated. But none of the others of the procession.

The aircraft was seen flying along the Mall before dropping the bombs. The 2 delay action bombs in front of the Palace have exploded & part of the railings & centre gates are damaged. There is no damage to the Palace itself I am glad to say & no windows are broken. What a good thing it is that the Palace is so thin though & that the bombs fell in the open spaces. It was most certainly a direct attack on B.P. to demolish it, & it won't make me like Hitler any better for it.
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The Queen gave an even more vivid account of the day when death came close and when the history of Buckingham Palace might well have come to an end. Her letter to Queen Mary, written on 13 September from Windsor Castle, is worth quoting in full.

My darling Mama,

I hardly know how to begin to tell you of the horrible attack on Buckingham Palace this morning.

Bertie & I arrived there at about
¼
to n, and he & I went up to our poor windowless rooms to collect a few odds and ends – I must tell you that there was a ‘Red' warning on, and I went into the little room opposite B's room, to see if he was coming down to the shelter. He asked me to take an eyelash out of his eye, and while I was battling with this task, Alec [Hardinge] came into the room with a batch of papers in his hand. At this moment we heard the unmistakable whirr-whirr of a German plane. We said ‘ah a German', and before anything else could be said, there was the noise of aircraft diving at great speed, and then the scream of a bomb. It all happened so quickly, that we had only time to look foolishly at each other, when the scream hurtled past us, and exploded with a tremendous crash in the quadrangle. I saw a great column of smoke & earth thrown up into the air, and then we all dashed like lightning into the corridor. There was another tremendous explosion, and we & our 2 pages who were outside the door, remained for a moment or two in the corridor away from the staircase, in case of flying glass. It is curious how one's instinct works at those moments of great danger, as quite without thinking, the urge was to get away from the windows. Everybody remained wonderfully calm, and we went down to the shelter. I went along to see if the housemaids were alright, and found them busy in their various shelters. Then came a cry for ‘bandages', and the first aid party, who had been training for over a year, rose magnificently to the occasion, and treated 3 poor casualties calmly and correctly.

They, poor men, were working below the Chapel, and how they survived I don't know. Their whole work-shop was a shambles, for the bomb had gone bang through the floor above them. My knees trembled a little bit for a minute or two after the explosions! But we both feel quite well today, tho' just a bit tired. I
was
so pleased with the behaviour of our Servants. They were really magnificent. I went along to the kitchen which, as you will remember, has a glass roof.

I found the chef bustling about, and when I asked him if he was alright, he replied cheerfully that there had been une petit quelque chose dans le coin, un petit bruit, with a broad smile. The petite quelque chose was the bomb on the Chapel just next door! He was perfectly unmoved, and took the opportunity to tell me of his unshakeable conviction that France will rise again!

We lunched down in our shelter, and luckily at about 1.30 the all-clear sounded, so we were able to set out on our tour of East and West Ham. The damage there is ghastly. I really felt as if I was walking in a dead city, when we walked down a little empty street. All the houses evacuated and yet through
the broken windows one saw all the poor little possessions, photographs, beds, just as they were left. At the end of the street is a school which was hit, and collapsed on the top of 500 people waiting to be evacuated – about 200 are still under the ruins. It does affect me seeing this terrible and senseless destruction. I think that really I mind it much more than being bombed myself. The people are marvellous, and full of fight. One could not imagine that life
could
become so terrible. We
must
win in the end.

Darling Mama, I do hope that you will let me come & stay a day or two later. It is so sad being parted, as this War has parted families.

With my love, and prayers
for your Safety, ever
darling Mama your
loving daughter in law
                        Elizabeth

P.S. Dear old B.P. is still standing and that is the main thing.
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The sheer daring of the German pilot evoked the unwilling admiration of a police constable, an old soldier, who immediately after the raid said to the Queen, ‘A magnificent piece of bombing, ma'am, if you'll pardon my saying so.'
⁴⁷

Princess Margaret was not amused. ‘The pilot got a double iron cross, the beast!'
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Both King and Queen made light of the attack, as the Lady-in-Waiting reported: ‘The King was not in the least upset … the Queen was of course marvellous, quite unruffled.'
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But as the King wrote, he later suffered delayed shock, ‘found myself unable to read, always in a hurry and glancing out of the window'.
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No one, not even Churchill, was told how near an escape they had had. Perhaps he would have reproved his King for failing to go down to the shelter when a ‘red' alert was on. Now, as they continued that afternoon with their planned visit to the shattered East End, the Queen could say, ‘I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.' The Lady-in-Waiting on duty said, ‘When we saw the devastation there, we were ashamed even of the glass of sherry
we had had after the bang.'
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The Queen's courage has been often praised, but it must be remembered that her Ladies-in-Waiting were also with her in the thick of the Blitz, often worrying about their own families and homes.

Nothing united the country more than the knowledge that the King and Queen shared their suffering. Lord Louis Mountbatten told the King, ‘If Goering could have realised the depths of feeling which his bombing of Buckingham Palace has aroused throughout the Empire and America, he would have been well advised to instruct his assassins to keep off.'
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Two of Nash's original conservatories were damaged, but the Palace stood firm. Nash's much criticized construction proved its strength. The Queen asked anxiously after the fate of the altar cloth in the Chapel which was made by disabled soldiers of the last war. An old soldier wrote to assure her that it ‘was not on the Altar at the time the Chapel was bombed. It is in very good order and is being well looked after. The altar cloth that was on I had carefully removed from the debris, cleaned and put away. It is only slightly damaged and can be repaired.'
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Buckingham Palace suffered four more direct hits. On 16 November 1940
The Times
reported a small bomb that fell on the Palace Mews. On 8 March 1941 the Northern Lodge of the Palace was wrecked, and a policeman killed by the flying debris.

The full story of this policeman was told only in December 1994 in the
London Police Pensioner.
It is worth recording the death of one otherwise unsung hero. PC Steve Robertson PC629A was doing a ‘casual' duty. He was based with other policemen inside the Wellington Arch, which, like Marble Arch, contained a number of rooms. It became a somewhat uncomfortable base for the police on guard in that area. When the King's old home, 145 Piccadilly, was bombed, it was policemen from this section who helped to dig the caretaker and his wife from the rubble. PC Robertson's colleague, PC Douglas Lightwood, later Chief Superintendent, Metropolitan Police, who, like many of PC Robertson's friends, was anxious that he should not be forgotten, wrote:

Most of the Wellington Arch personnel had narrow squeaks at one time or another, but the most serious and most tragic incident was that which befell a close pal of mine, PC 629A Steve Robertson. Steve was doing a ‘casual' duty on late turn relief on No 1 Garden Beat at Buckingham Palace on Saturday March 8 1941.

During a short sharp air raid by 123 bombers of Luft Flotte Nr. 3 based in northern France that evening, a bomber dropped a basket of 1 kilo phosphorous incendiary bombs on the area around the North Lodge where Steve was on duty. Shunning the safety afforded by the bell steel shelter nearby and ignoring the orders not to tackle incendiaries unless they were threatening the Palace itself, because some contained high explosives which could kill, Steve began to snuff out the blazing devices.

With his attention totally absorbed in this dangerous undertaking, he failed to hear or chose to ignore the sound of another bomber heading his way. A stick of six bombs was aimed at the Palace, the first falling on the parade ground of Wellington Barracks, another on the lawns of Queens Gardens, three on the forecourt of the Palace, and the last one scoring a direct hit on the North Lodge, completely demolishing it. Steve was buried beneath a pile of masonry.

He should have reported off duty at 10 p.m. but when he failed to do so a Sergeant Parrott and another officer went in search. They came upon the pile of rubble which was once the North Lodge and heard a sound coming from underneath, just like someone tapping one piece of stone on another. By clearing some of the debris away they found Steve who, although he was still alive, was barely conscious and in a bad way. They raised the alarm, a rescue squad arrived, and they dug Steve out and put him in an ambulance but he died before reaching Charing Cross Hospital.

The most cruel thing about Steve's untimely end was he need not have been there at all that evening. He did a colleague a favour by agreeing to do a swap of duties with him.

He added:

Since that tragic night there have been reports of unexplained scratching sounds coming from the exact spot where Steve lay dying, and there has been one report of the ghostly figure of a policeman in wartime uniform which dissolved before the eyes of the onlooker.
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Ghost or no ghost, without the courage of PC Robertson and many like him, there would have been no more history of Buckingham Palace to be written.

In June 1941 another bomb caused minor damage in the grounds. In August 1944 there was more serious destruction when a ‘flying bomb' landed in the grounds of the Palace, shattering windows and destroying trees. These pilotless missiles, known as the Vi, were unnerving. After the sudden silence, when the drone of the engine stopped, came a heart-stopping ‘crump'. But they were no more successful in destroying the morale of Londoners than the earlier conventional bombs. The invasion attempt of 1940 had failed. The Blitz had shattered cities, but not determination.

In Hitler's plan the destruction of Buckingham Palace was to be a symbolic prelude to his invasion of Britain. If the King was killed – so much the better.

Day after day the King and Queen toured the blitzed city, Queen Elizabeth deliberately choosing to wear her most cheerful clothes. An admiring woman from Chicago sent her this tribute:

Be it said to your renown
That you wore your gayest gown,
Your bravest smile, and stayed in Town
When London Bridge was burning down,
           My fair lady.
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Tirelessly the King and Queen toured hospitals and factories – not only in London, they also travelled in their special train to Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Portsmouth and South Wales, and wherever cities were under attack. The King's sudden appearance in Coventry, for instance, after the city had been devastated, lifted morale.

Throughout 1941 the bombing of London continued. In the fierce attack of 10 May the Houses of Parliament were hit. The Chamber of the House of Commons was reduced to ashes and the roof of the twelfth-century Westminster Hall was set on fire.

Even the young Princesses played their part. The fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth spoke on 13 October 1940 on the BBC radio's
Children's Hour. ‘We know,' she said, in her high, clear, girlish voice, ‘every one of us, that in the end all will be well.'
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But it was to be long years before all was well.

On 7 December 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. America now declared war on Japan and Germany. Franklin Roosevelt had been sympathetic throughout the war, giving what help he could in spite of the US's official policy of neutrality. The King's friendship with the American President had been maintained throughout the dark days of the Blitz by their informal letters. But in October 1942 it was important to strengthen the alliance and to bring home to the Americans the dangers the British were enduring. It would obviously be impossible for the crippled President to visit Britain himself, but the King had shrewdly judged Eleanor Roosevelt and invited her to visit Britain. She had courage and energy, and was observant, intelligent and articulate. She would report back honestly to the President. Mrs Roosevelt made the perilous flight to Britain. She was invited to spend a weekend at Chequers, and Queen Mary asked her to stay a night with her at Badminton, but nothing gave her a better sense of the danger and misery the King and Queen shared with their people than her visit to Buckingham Palace. The Queen wrote to Queen Mary from Balmoral on 19 October 1942, telling her that ‘Mrs R' was going to Chequers for the weekend, but