Early in 1917 Hamilton was reinforced by the arrival of Piers ‘Joey’ Legh, another Grenadier and a son of Lord Newton. Legh was to remain with the Prince for twenty years and accompany him into exile after the abdication. More than ten years again after that he was still talking of the man ‘whom he had loved and whose charm was so great that he would thrill with emotion if the Duke entered the room just now’.27 As with Claud Hamilton, the Prince accepted from him rebukes which a vainer or more touchy man would have resented. In June 1917 General Cavan told him off for devoting too much time to his interminable runs, neglecting the newspapers and paying no attention to world affairs. ‘Of course he is right really and I don’t attempt to be a P of W or prepare for being so,’ the culprit admitted ruefully, ‘but how I hate all that sort of thing and how unsuited I am for the job!!’ Yet he persisted with his runs. Legh spoke to him ‘like a father’, and threatened to report him to Cavan. The Prince continued to offend, whereupon Legh did report him and Cavan categorically forbade further runs. ‘That old shit Joey,’ the Prince wrote in his diary, ‘but I’m none the less fond of him and forgive him all as he’s only done it for my good …’28
Hamilton and Legh, the Prince told his mother, were ‘my 2 great friends who are and have been real friends to me; I’m devoted to them!!’29 Without their companionship he would have found intolerable the gloom and, as he saw it, uselessness of his life in Cavan’s headquarters; even with them his depression sometimes almost overcame him. One day when he had been refused a visit to the front line, he remained in his room, writing letters till 1 a.m. ‘I could not face … any company. I wanted to be alone in my misery!! I feel quite ready to commit suicide and would if I didn’t think it unfair on Papa.’30 He no doubt over-dramatized his misery, but he was an unhappy and frustrated man. More and more he dreaded the next ‘push’, when he knew there would be yet further massacres, more friends killed, more shame for him. He went to a staff meeting at which an attack was ordered on a certain hill. The General involved protested, but Cavan insisted the hill must be taken. ‘He must have hated doing this as I could see he was worried. Several people have told me that the whole plan of attack seems to them impossible and mad. Of course Haig doesn’t think of the poor buggers who will have to pay the price for this …’31 He tried to convince himself that a war of bloody attrition held the only hope of victory, but signally failed. ‘These continuous heavy casualty lists make me sick,’ he wrote during the battle of the Somme, ‘it all seems such a waste for of course it doesn’t matter if we don’t push on another few miles as regards the end of the war, we only push to kill Huns and help our allies. I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to look on the situation in such a big way; I can’t keep the wretched infantry being slaughtered out of my thoughts.’32
It was just before this battle that the Prince went with Cavan’s deputy, General Morland, to see the first ‘tanks’, a code word for ‘these new land submarines’. He was impressed by their ingenuity, admired the bravery of their crews, but was sceptical of their value: ‘They are good toys but I don’t have much faith in their success.’33 He told his father of his doubts and was duly crushed: ‘With regard to the “Tanks” which you scoffed at when you first saw them …’ retorted the King, reports were so good that several hundred had been ordered.34 The King was proved right in the end, but the performance of the tank in the First World War, at least before the battle of Cambrai more than a year later, did something to support the Prince’s scepticism.
The progress of the war over its last two years is marked by his ever growing respect for the fighting men; not just for the officers or the Guardsmen but ‘for the British conscript … for he hates the whole thing and isn’t fired with the same spirit as were the first hundred thousand’. And yet they managed to keep ‘so marvellously cheery’ and to prepare for each new scene of carnage with renewed determination. They were marvels, ‘it does make one feel so proud of being an Englishman’. More was being asked of them than had ever been asked of British troops before. And he felt humble as well as proud: ‘No one can realize what these … battles are like till they’ve been in one, and I don’t, as I never have.’35
He never stopped trying to get forward to the front line, never stopped hating it when he was there. In June 1917 he rose at 4 a.m. to go to the trenches: ‘and how I loathed it!! But frightened tho’ I am, I should honestly loathe it still more if I never went forward!!’36 Shortly before that he told Lady Coke that in recent months he had only once been within range of enemy shellfire since his return, ‘so you need have no thoughts for my safety’.37 The worst danger he had confronted was in October 1916, when he was at the front with General Gathorne Hardy. A shell fell forty yards in front, then one thirty yards behind. Fortunately the German gunners did not complete the bracket: ‘I’ve never been so near becoming a casualty before, though it did me worlds of good, frightening me properly.’38 Four days later they were still more comprehensively shelled. ‘That strafing we got has taught me more than anything ever has during my 2 years out here; it gives me a slight impression of what our men have to go through these days.’39
Gathorne Hardy was the last person with whom the Prince would have chosen to die; ‘he is so unfair to all his subordinates that I feel ashamed to be out with him!!’40 The Prince’s dislike for Gathorne Hardy had started one particularly cold and wet night when the Grenadiers were moving up to the front. A staff officer remarked, ‘Lord, I’m sorry for those poor devils going up.’ ‘Oh well, they’ve got their ground sheets,’ retorted Gathorne Hardy. ‘Pass the port.’41 The remark probably signified little, but to the Prince it showed unforgivable callousness. His respect for the fighting men would never have allowed him to speak of them so indifferently. Indeed he would never have made a First World War general; he was too soft-hearted, too squeamish, too concerned about the safety and comfort of the men. ‘I’m v keen on the fighting troops being made as comfortable as possible always …’ he told Wigram. ‘Poor devils, they have a bloody enough time in the trenches … they are absolutely marvellous and I’d do anything for them.’42
As a weapon of war, he rated the aeroplane far ahead of the tank. Early in September 1917 he visited the Cigognes, the crack French squadron which included Guinemeyer, the ace who had shot down over fifty German planes. ‘They are fine fellows,’ he told Lady Coke, ‘and all gentlemen, to put it snobbishly, which makes such a difference really.’ The visit was of particular interest to him because a few weeks before he had been given permission by the King to go up in an aeroplane himself, provided it was nowhere near the line. He had had his first flight on 17 July: ‘It’s a wonderful feeling up there,’ he wrote, ‘but I don’t feel I ever want to learn to fly.’43 In fact he was soon eager to do so, and though he took no steps to learn until long after the war, he went up quite frequently over the next two years. One account says that his permission to fly was withdrawn because he flew with a Canadian war ace who was photographed piloting the aircraft with one arm in a sling.44 There is nothing in the Prince’s diary about this, though in September 1918 he did