Stamfordham urged him not to admit to the King that he was bored and under-employed lest he found himself called back to England. ‘You are so terribly keen and full of “go” that you wish always to be doing something …’38 More cheeringly, Desmond Fitzgerald insisted that he was always doing something: ‘You have little idea what an enormous amount of good you do and how much everyone admires and loves you.’39 But it was not the sort of love and admiration the Prince wanted. Shortly after his arrival he was made to inspect some Indian troops. He accepted that his visit had done wonders for their morale but, ‘I hated this, as I haven’t come out for that sort of thing.’40 French was restrained in his use of the Prince as popular figurehead, but he knew well that ‘that sort of thing’ was what the Army wanted.
Hospital visiting was another valuable service. ‘It pleases the men and shows you take a sympathetic interest in their welfare,’ George V told his son.41 The sympathy was real, and though the Prince felt he should be playing a more valiant role, the warmth and generosity of his nature ensured that the memory of his visits was cherished by all those who experienced them. There is a story, often recounted, of the occasion when the Prince noticed that one patient had been segregated behind curtains. He asked why, and was told that the man had been so fearfully mutilated that it was thought better to keep him out of the way. The Prince insisted on seeing him, stood by his bed, then leant over and kissed him. Lady Donaldson in her admirable biography, properly sceptical of such picturesque but unsubstantiated anecdotes, dismissed it as apocryphal.42 It does sound too good to be true. But many years later Gordon Selwyn, the chaplain of the hospital and later Dean of Winchester, told Shane Leslie how well he recalled the scene. ‘Remember,’ the Dean said, ‘men have gone to heaven for less. Never can we forget that action.’43
Keeping on good terms with the French was another way the Prince could help significantly. He was frequently despatched on liaison visits to French headquarters. The reports which he drafted on his return were of slight value. The cavalry were ‘not bad riders … but they are about the worst horse masters in the world!!’; the officers were markedly inferior to their British counterparts: ‘They are brave enough and some of them very capable, but they don’t possess that personality or refineness [sic] which the British officer does, giving the latter complete control over his men, who will generally respect him and follow him anywhere!! How can this ideal state of affairs be reached when frequently the officer is of much lower birth than some of his men?’ In spite of this, he concluded in some surprise, ‘discipline in the French army is good one would say’.44 But what mattered was not his somewhat jejune judgment of the French Army but the impression he left behind him. ‘I only hope I did some good,’ the Prince wrote to his father … ‘I went out of my way to be civil and always called on any general or senior officer at any place I passed.’45 Staunch republicans usually make the most fervent royalists and the French military warmed to their shy, friendly and unassuming visitor. ‘Il a su ravir tout le monde par sa simplicité, sa bonne grace et sa belle jeunesse,’ wrote General Huguet. ‘Il sait par ses charmantes qualités gagner les coeurs autour de lui.’46 Huguet was an anglophile; more remarkable was the notoriously rebarbative and anti-British general who, after a visit by the Prince, admitted reluctantly: ‘Il parait que parmi vous autres, il y a quand même des gens civilisés.’47
But this was not why he had come to France. Endlessly he reproached himself for the comfort and ease of his existence, compared with the rigours of ‘the poor people in the trenches. I fear this is going to be a very soft life.’48 His initial impression of Sir John French was good – ‘he seems a charming man, so human’ – but he could not say as much for the rest of the staff; ‘a d—d uninteresting crowd and no mistake’.49 In a less atrabilious mood he would admit that it was not so much that the staff were boring as that they were twenty years older than him. At GHQ a colonel was small fry; young men of twenty were unheard of. Osbert Sitwell, who sometimes found himself similarly out of place at large gatherings of dignitaries, remembered ‘the very young, slight figure of the Prince of Wales … with his extreme charm, his melancholy smile and angry eyes, trying like myself, I expect, to pretend he was enjoying himself’.50 The Prince was lonely, and the loneliness was only exacerbated by the constant presence of the officer charged with his day-to-day wellbeing, the middle-aged and portly Colonel Barry. Only when Barry was joined in January 1915 by a young Grenadier captain, Lord Claud Hamilton, was the Prince’s desolation mitigated: ‘He is such a good chap and has done very well in the 1st batt and got a DSO. It is very nice for me having him here.’51
The sharpest pain lay in the knowledge that his contemporaries, in particular in the Grenadiers, were dying in their tens of thousands while he sat safely behind the line. Thirty-five Grenadier officers were killed in the fighting at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915: ‘Isn’t it too ghastly to think of …’ he wrote to his closest confidante, Lady Coke. ‘But of course I never went near the fighting; kept right away as usual!!’52 Godfrey Thomas got the same complaint: ‘I do hate being a prince and not allowed to fight!!’53 On his birthday Desmond Fitzgerald said that he could not think of any suitable present: ‘The only thing I know of that you would really like, I cannot give you, and that is that you would become an ordinary person.’54
He strove endlessly to get permission to join his regiment, or to serve even for a few days in the front line. Briefly he was posted to General Charles Monro’s divisional headquarters near Bethune, only to be moved back promptly when an attack was imminent. But he did win at least half his point. In February 1915 the King agreed that he might visit the trenches ‘provided that you are with responsible people … I want you to do exactly what other young officers on the Staff do, but not to run unnecessary risks, no “joy-rides” or looking for adventure … I want you to gain an insight into the life they lead in the trenches. I hope now your mind will be at rest and that you will not be depressed any more. You can do anything within reason except actually fighting in the trenches.’55 It was something, a great deal indeed, but opportunities for a young officer at GHQ to approach the front line were still few and far between. There are plenty of accounts which describe his hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach. The future Lord Lee wrote that ‘his main desire appeared to be to get either killed or wounded. At intervals he had to be retrieved from advanced trenches and dugouts, whither he had escaped by one subterfuge or another.’56 A fellow officer described him complaining he had never seen a shell burst within a hundred yards of him. Claud Hamilton remarked that one had burst nearer than that. ‘Yes, but dash it, I never saw it!’ exclaimed the Prince.57 ‘He loved danger,’ said the Rev. Tubby Clayton.58
Clayton’s comment, at least, is nonsense. The Prince never courted danger, still less loved it. He found shelling terrifying and freely admitted as much. General Sir Ian Hamilton denied that he ever flouted his instructions or took unnecessary risks. ‘He did take risks, but they were always in the line of duty. We did worry about him … but not because of any insubordination on his part.’59 Whenever he left the trenches to return to headquarters, he did so with relief. But he did so with shame as well. The ferocious battering to which he subjected his body, with a regime of endless walks and runs, a minimum of food and sleep, must have been in part a mortification of the flesh to assuage this conviction of his inadequacy. If he had been able to change places with a subaltern in the most exposed part of the line he would have done so with alacrity, though also with dismay and trepidation. The moans that fill his diary and letters to his friends about his unlucky lot are wearisome to read and seem sometimes overdone. Their constant refrain, however, was that he was being denied the chance to do as his friends and contemporaries were doing and risk his life for his country. He never stopped trying and it is impossible not to feel respect for his efforts.
His brief sojourn with Monro and the 2nd Division at Bethune included a visit to the Guards Brigade – ‘The best day I have had since I’ve been out, for it was a real treat to be with my brother officers and away from the staff.’ The treat was cut short when Monro