Sombre Queen remembers the fallen
Protocol changes sees the Prince of Wales break with decades of tradition as silence falls on Whitehall
The Queen watches the Remembrance Sunday service from a balcony, after breaking tradition by asking the Prince of Wales to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph on her behalf. A Royal equerry laid a wreath for the now-retired Duke of Edinburgh
‘At the age she and the Duke are, you have to step back. I will look to her, then to the Cenotaph’
AS SILENCE fell at the 11th hour, nothing could distract from honouring the Glorious Dead. It was, after all, their day. Only those watching closely would have detected a subtle shift at the Cenotaph yesterday, as the eventual future of the monarchy eased its way quietly into the nation’s consciousness.
As mother watched on with the calm dignity she has made a virtue in her 91 years of public duty, her eldest son stepped forward to lay a wreath on her behalf, in a break from a tradition that had barely changed in 65 years.
If the Prince of Wales was contemplating the significance of the moment, he did not show it. Instead, looking straight ahead deep in thought, he did his duty with a steady hand as generations of his family watched on.
For Royal commentators, the moment could not have been weighted with more significance: widely interpreted as a gradual transition for the Queen, who remains dedicated to her public duties, and her heir.
To experienced attendees, many of the sights and sounds of the morning will have been comfortingly familiar: the stirring arrival of the Massed Bands of the Brigade of Guards, for instance, or the temporarily reinstated Big Ben marking the 11th hour. Or the four living former prime ministers, senior cabinet members and party leaders, led by Theresa May, filing out in silent unity.
One new sight, however, greeted those who were paying attention: the diminutive figure of the Queen appearing on the central balcony of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Dressed in black, with a clutch of blood-red poppies pinned to her left shoulder, she was all-but motionless at the side of the Duke of Edinburgh, who came out of retirement at 96 to honour veterans.
The wreath-laying was the first time the Queen has asked her eldest son to represent her at the Whitehall Cenotaph when she has been present and will be interpreted as the most visible
concession to the monarch’s long reign yet. Since 1945, she has missed laying the wreath herself only six times: on four occasions when she was overseas, and twice when she was pregnant. The Prince of Wales has represented her just once, in 1983.
When a shot from a 13-pounder First World War gun signalled the end of a two-minute silence, the Prince strode forward and placed the wreath at the base of the tomb. He saluted and stepped back. He was followed by Capt Ben Tracey, the equerry tasked with representing the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Prince’s own wreath was followed by the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, wearing his uniform of Captain in the Blues and Royals and beard, and the Duke of York. While the Duchess of Cornwall stood with the Queen and Prince Philip, the Duchess of Cambridge watched from an adjacent balcony with the Countess of Wessex and Princess Alexandra.
Among the veterans paying their respects was Ernie Searling, a 99-yearold former Royal Marine in the Second World War. The oldest veteran at the march, it was his first time at the Whitehall Cenotaph and, he told people with a twinkle, “probably my last one”. A ripple of applause followed him wherever his wheelchair went.
Bob Gallagher, 56, a naval seaman aboard HMS Argonaut when it was hit by a bomb 25 years ago off the Falklands, killing two colleagues, said of the Queen: “At the age she and the Duke are, you have to step back. I will look to her, then to the Cenotaph.”
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence announced that 2016 was the first year in nearly five decades without a serviceman killed in operations. Instead, it has been a year in which the primary threat was once again shown to be domestic terrorism. Mercifully, Sunday’s commemoration passed without incident. Instead that quiet, dignified constancy returned.
In Northern Ireland, a remembrance parade was disrupted after a viable pipe bomb was discovered close to a war memorial in Omagh. The march had to be diverted and a wreath-laying ceremony postponed after the device was discovered almost two decades after a dissident republican Real IRA blast killed 29 in the busy market town in 1998.
It was exactly 30 years to the day after 12 people were killed by an IRA bomb in Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh.