Unusual yet somehow special send-off
HOW many millions of TV viewers around the world would have been watching the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral at Windsor Castle on Saturday? It was quite something and in so many different ways.
It was held in observance of the Covid-19 protocols – not a huge state funeral – which made the service in St George’s Chapel very much an intimate family affair, reflecting Prince Philip’s own values and his role over the decades of support for Queen Elizabeth, alongside his international role in activities such as nature conservation.
The service – including hymns and readings – and the military pageantry were much of it planned in advance by the duke himself. And it all brilliantly captured his life, his career in the Royal Navy and elsewhere, his values – without having to be explicit about it. And the placing of a handful of choristers in the chapel was musically brilliant, a wonderful and telling evasion of the Covid-19 scourge. And of course, sympathy would no doubt have welled up all over the world for Queen Elizabeth, a lonely yet dignified figure, a widow in black after 73 years of marriage.
This was a potent memorial to Prince Philip – spare, dignified yet full of unstated significance. The Brits know how to do these things.
And, oddly enough, a tribute came this way on the very day of the funeral. It is from South African poet Alf Hutchison, who recalls an encounter with the prince in Cape Town.
It was Remembrance Day, November 11, in 1995 when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were to lay a wreath at the Commonwealth War Graves memorial service. The MOTHs were the guard of honour. Hutchison was pushing a wheelchair holding one
Charlie Osborne, a much older war veteran.
“The queen very graciously acknowledged Charlie with her inimitable smile and greeting; as did Prince Phillip. They had swiftly passed us, continuing to inspect the old Vets. They were more than halfway along the rank and file of Vets, when Prince Philip did the unthinkable; he left the queen to continue and he walked back to Charlie.
“’That is the Burma Star you have among your medals?’ Prince Phillip inquired.
“‘Yes sir, it is,’ came Charlie’s affirmative very proud answer.
“‘I don’t see another medal like it here’, confirmed the Prince. ‘Then you were under my command, possibly on my ship’.
“Prince Philip then broke all normal protocol. Bending down he took Charlie’s arthritic hands and continued chatting to him. He then stood up and looked me in the eye and said: ‘You will take great care of him, won’t you, young man’. He turned and caught up to the queen’s entourage.
“That gesture of Prince Philip has remained with me all these years. He was one of Britain’s true officers and indeed a true gentleman. The world is a poorer place for his loss.”
Who could disagree?
Tailpiece
A FROG’S perspective on life: time’s fun when you’re having flies.
Last word
MY THEORY of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.