“Daughter of Empire” (Lady Pamela Hicks): Living through history

On August 25, 1942 Churchill sent a condolence on the death of Duke of Kent (brother of Edward VIII and George VI) who died of airplane crash on official mission.

“It is with the deepest sorrow that I learnt the news of your irreparable loss.  The Duke of Kent had endeared himself to all by charming nature and willingness to help & serve. . . In this hard war such stroke of fate fall upon many homes; and all dwell under the shadow.  From all these homes there flows to you today a tide of human sympathy & affection to which—though I know the useless of words—I wish to add my own feeling.  May you be granted the strength to bear the sorrow is the only prayer that we can utter.”

Duke of Kent

In “Daughter of Empire”, Lady Pamela Ducks mentioned this (as Duke of Kent was her godfather).  She didn’t mention the exact date of air crash; but it was one paragraph after we read,

“Every prisoner could work if he so wished.  Most helped on local farms. . . That August, 1943, it was all hands to the pump as grandmamma and I worked with them to bring in the harvest.” (You’ll be surprised at how extended royal families did for the war effort.)

But, Duke of Kent was killed on 8/25/1942.  Year mixed up notwithstanding, what we read as history was happening in her daily life.

“The war showed no sign of abating and tragedy struck when my godfather, the Duke of Kent, was killed in an air accident.  He had been on his way—in thick fog—to Iceland on an RAF mission, when the Sunderland flying boat in which he was being flown crashed into a Scottish hillside in Caithness.  I was very shocked by this news—he and his ADC, Michael Strutt, had stayed with us only two weeks earlier and now both men had been killed.  This was what was meant by the fragility of life, I thought, and I prayed that such a fate would not befall my father.”

Right after that she wrote,

When the British and American forces invaded French North Africa, I recorded optimistically in my diary, “The war news is wonderful—about Libya and Egypt.  Our forces have driven the German back over the Egyptian border.  We hope that the war over there is almost over.”  This hope was echoed by Winston Churchill in his dramatic speech the following day, words I turned over and over in my mind: “This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Erwin Rommel in 1942

11/9/1942 Rommel was defending Sidi Barrani, 200 miles west of El Alamein, “now this is not the end,” Churchill declared in London at the annual Lord Mayor's Lunches on Nov. 10, “it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” (Thus defeating Rommel in North Africa was the ‘end of the beginning’ of WWII.  I personally divid the WWII—European Theater—into three parts: Part I is North African Campaign; June 6 1944 D-Day is the beginning of Part III, anything between Part I and Part III is Part II, chiefly Italian Campaign.)

The Battle of Alamein (in Egypt) began on Oct. 23, 1942, Axis forces retreated from El Alamein on Nov. 4, turning the tide. The American Sherman tanks arrived in September 1942 and that made a great difference.

Of the numerous letters Rommel wrote to his wife, the one he wrote (10/28/42) during this Battle was particularly touching, in which he expressed the sad sentiment about whether he can survive this defeat, “Whether I would survive a defeat lies in God's hands.  The lot of the vanquished is heavy . . . My last thought is of you. . . After I am gone, you must bear the mourning proudly.”