KING GEORGE SEES HIS PEOPLE

Evening Star, Issue 23723, 2 November 1940, Page 3

KING GEORGE SEES HIS PEOPLE

IGNIS ON BUCKINGHAM PALACE

• Glancing up. as the air raid sirens burst into a Availing warning, the tall, trimly-uniformed man and his smartlydressed wife stepped from their car, walked slowly into a South_ Loudon shelter (writes New York ‘ Times ’ of September 23). In the dim half-light they could see a score of Londoners sitting on the hard wooden chairs—overalled 'A.R.P. men, women canteen workers, policemen, workers covered with tho dust of a shattered building next door.

At first the others hardly noticed their arrival, then leaped to their feet with amazement, cheered lustily _as they recognised Their Majesties King George VI. and Queen Elizabeth. Smiling,, the King sat down, crossed his legs, pulled out a cigarette, and began chatting amicably about the bombings. The Queen laid her fox fur across her lap, nodded cordial assent to the nervous offer of a cup of tea. While it was still steeping, the “ all clear” sounded, but their Majesties, in no hurry, decided to wait, sipped the tea from the thick mugs marked Police Canteen.” Said the Queen, as they rose to go. “This is delicious. I should never have thought you could produce tea so soon.” Last week their Majesties’ informal inspection tours carried them all over London. In the crowded working-class East End they peered over the lip of a huge bomb crater, looked past it to a heap of rubble where 20 houses had once stood. At one side was a row of shattered dwellings, their backs blown out. exposing the rooms full of broken furniture, battered pictures swinging in the breeze. At his feet the King discovered a wedding photograph, the bride ironically holding a lucky horseshoe. While he watched, a demolition squad rescued a squirming Pekinese, dug frantically for its owner. Farther down the street, the King climbed over a pile of debris to get a better look, won a congratulatory “Nice work, mate,” for his agility. Amazedly he examined a block of flats which had been pushed back three feet by an explosion, yet still stood. “ They have the steel girders to thank for that, I suppose,” said the King. In one of theirt a woman was still scrubbing her littered floor, looked up to see him standing there, exclaiming: “Lor luv a duck, if it’s not the King himself, and me so untidy.” Shouted another: “ I bet ole ’ltler wouldn’t come among his people like this without even a bodyguard. God bless and keep you.” When the King and Queen went home they found a sorry welcome. A delayed-action bomb had exploded in the north wing of Buckingham Palace, spattering the whole facade with fragments, blasting out all the windows in the wing. In the Royal suite they found furniture and carpets cut and scarred with flying splinters of glass, blackened with a layer of soot. Outside, the steps and balustrades leading up to the building were shattered, stringing out in bits of debris over the green lawn where the Royal garden parties are held, 'ft here the Princesses had had a swimming pool was a ragged crater, full of stone and woodwork. Shrugged the King: “It might have been much worse.”

Three days later it was. While the King and Queen waited out the last of an eight and a-half hour alarm with a morning cup of tea, the whole Palace shivered with the thud of bombs from low-diving Nazi raiders. A bomb dropping through the glass roof of the private chapel, a converted conservatory, .had blasted chunks of masonry out of the wall, demolished the altar, shattered a mother-of-pearl cross. In the midst of the rubble they found Queen Victoria’s ornately-bound Family Bible. But already removed to safety was the gold altar plate of King Charles 1. In the inner quadrangle two'more bombs had ploughed into the ground.

At week’s end their Majesties returned again to (Buckingham to inspect the results of a third attack. This time the Queen’s quarters were hit. when a heavy bomb smashed through her suite to the tapestry room on the first floor, used by the Queen as a drawing room. As the all-out attacks by the Luftwaffe •went into their second week, the damage to the Palace was estimated at over £20,000.