HRH PRINCE PHILIP 1921-2021
Commemorating and paying tribute to the late Duke of Edinburgh, History of War reflects on how conflict shaped the course of his life, beginning with exile from his native kingdom and subsequent resolute service during WWII
A look back on how conflict shaped the Duke of Edinburgh's early life, from civil war in Greece to Royal Navy service
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, represented the British monarchy for almost 70 years and was the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch. However, his early life was formed by war, neglect, tragedy and dogged endurance.
Born on 10 June, 1921, on the Greek island of Corfu at Mons Repos, Philip was the only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg who already had four daughters: Cecilie, Sophie, Margarita and Theodora. He was born during a turbulent time for Greece and his stay in the country of his birth would not last long.
Philip’s father Andrew was absent at his birth as he was away fighting in the Greek Army during the Greco-turkish War (1919-22). Andrew was the commander of the Greek Second Army Corps during this conflict but he proved to be an ineffectual general. At the pivotal Battle of Sakarya on 19 September 1921, he refused to obey the orders of his superior officer and tried to work to his own battle plan. Unfortunately this lack of coordination and communication contributed to a battlefield stalemate. Andrew was relieved of his command and a year later he was arrested as part of the 11 September 1922 Revolution. This was a revolt of the Greek armed forces against the government who they held responsible for the Turkish victory.
The Greek monarchy was overthrown and King Constantine abdicated.
As the brother of Constantine and a disgraced army commander, Andrew was in deep trouble. He was accused of treason and initially sentenced to death. General Pangalos, the Greek Minister of War, asked him, “How many children have you?” When Andrew replied Pangalos reportedly said, “Poor things, what a pity they will soon be orphans.”
When Princess Alice heard of Andrew’s plight she travelled to Athens to plead for his life but she was not permitted to see her husband, so she turned to her British relatives for help. King George V urged for a British intervention to evacuate the family. A Greek court banished Andrew from Greece for life and he was released in December 1922. He was lucky: six other senior members of the government were tried and executed. Soon afterwards a Royal Navy gunboat, HMS Calypso, evacuated the family from Corfu. Prince Philip, who was still a baby, was reputedly carried out to the ship in a makeshift cot made out of an orange box. For the infant child it was the start of decades of stateless wandering.
The British side of Philip’s family eventually took a large part of responsibility for his care. His maternal grandmother, Princess Victoria, sent him to live with his uncle George, Marquis of Milford Haven. He was Philip’s guardian for the next seven years and became a surrogate father to him. Philip would become close friends with George’s son David, who later became his best man at his wedding to Princess Elizabeth. The two boys attended Cheam School, where
Philip excelled at sport. The Marquis would often come to watch him and his son play in school matches. The Milford Havens gave Philip a sense of stability that was lacking elsewhere but he remembered the upheaval as confusing. When he was later asked what language was spoken at home he replied, “What do you mean, at home?”
It was his British relatives who, in 1938, helped bring new purpose to Philip’s life in more ways than one. Under the advice of his father and Lord Mountbatten, Philip joined the Royal Navy and enrolled at the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. He excelled at naval training and almost passed with top marks.
His contemporary Terence Lewin, who later became First Sea Lord, said, “Prince Philip was a highly talented seaman. No doubt about it. If he hadn’t become what he did, he would have been First Sea Lord and not me.” This was an intense time to join the navy as Britain was on the brink of war with Germany but Philip’s time at Dartmouth coincided with the first meeting of his future wife. In July 1939 he was put in
“IT HAD BEEN MARVELLOUSLY QUICK THINKING. PRINCE PHILIP SAVED OUR LIVES THAT NIGHT”
charge of entertaining his distant cousins, 13-year old Princess Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret when they visited the college. They had met briefly in 1934 and in 1937 at George VI’S coronation but on this occasion Elizabeth fell for Philip. Over the next few years they would write letters to each other but for the moment there were other priorities. There was a war to be fought.
Philip’s war service began when he was posted to HMS Ramillies in Ceylon in January 1940. In the early days of the war he was posted far from action as Greece was not at war and as a Greek prince the British did not want him to be killed on a Royal Navy ship. However, this immediately changed when Italy invaded Greece and Philip became an active participant on the Allied side. At the Battle of Cape Matapan off the Greek coast in March 1941 Philip served as a midshipman on HMS Valiant, where he was in charge of operating the ship’s searchlight to pick out Italian ships during the night. He recalled, “I reported that I had a target in sight and was ordered to ‘open shutter’. The beam lit up a stationary cruiser and at this point all hell broke loose, as all our eight 15-inch guns, plus those of the flagship, plus HMS Barham, started firing at the stationary cruiser, which disappeared in an explosion and a cloud of smoke. I was then ordered to ‘train left’ and lit up another Italian cruiser, which was given the same treatment.” The ships identified by Philip were two of five Italian warships that were sunk by the British with the loss of 2,300 sailors. It was Italy’s greatest naval defeat and Philip was Mentioned in Despatches for his courage and awarded the Greek Cross of Valour.
The next year, at the age of 21, Philip was promoted to become one of the youngest first lieutenants in the navy and in July 1943 he was once again in action, this time aboard
HMS Wallace taking part in the Allied invasion of Sicily. During a night attack Wallace came under bombardment from a German plane.
One yeoman sailor aboard the ship, Harry Hargreaves, recalled in a 2003 interview: “It was obvious that we were a target and they would not stop until we had suffered a fatal hit. It was like being blindfolded and trying to evade an enemy whose only problem was getting his aim right. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that a direct hit was inevitable.”
During a lull in the attack Philip acted quickly: “The first lieutenant (Philip) went into hurried conversation with the captain, and the next thing a wooden raft was being put together on deck.” This raft was attached with smoke floats that created the illusion of debris ablaze on the water. The German plane was fooled into attacking the raft and the ship slipped away under the cover of darkness. Hargreaves praised Philip’s initiative: “It had been marvellously quick thinking. Prince Philip saved our lives that night. I suppose there would have been a few survivors, but certainly the ship would have been sunk. He was always very courageous and resourceful.” Philip himself later talked about his plan in a BBC interview, describing it as “a frightfully good wheeze… we got away with it”. Despite his nonchalance even he conceded “it was a very unpleasant sensation”.
Philip ended his war aboard HMS Whelp, which was one of the ships that took part in the formal surrender of Japanese forces on 2 September, 1945. He recalled: “Being in Tokyo Bay with the surrender ceremony taking place in the battle ship, which was what, 200 yards away and you could see what was going on with a pair of binoculars, it was a great relief.” After the surrender his ship took on former prisoners of war and he was shocked by their appearance. “These people were naval people. They were emaciated… tears pouring down their cheeks, they just drank their tea, they couldn’t really speak. It was a most extraordinary sensation.”
Philip had witnessed the end of the war and now that it was over he expected to continue in his naval career, but fate had determined a different future for him. He had kept in touch with Elizabeth throughout the war and she kept a photograph of him on her dressing table.
Once he was on leave, Philip would drive in his
“HE EXPECTED TO CONTINUE IN HIS NAVAL CAREER BUT FATE HAD DETERMINED A DIFFERENT FUTURE FOR HIM”
black MG car to visit her. In 1946 he proposed and they became secretly engaged.
Elizabeth’s father George VI initially objected to the match, despite liking Philip. The prince had an excellent war record but he wasn’t British and didn’t belong to the Church of England. He didn’t even have a surname and ‘foreign’ marriages were viewed with caution, particularly in the wake of the 1936 Abdication Crisis. Philip formally asked George for permission to marry Elizabeth and the king agreed on the proviso that he wait for an official engagement until Elizabeth turned 21 in April 1947.
Philip’s destiny was confirmed in November 1947 when he married Elizabeth in
Westminster Abbey. George VI gave him the titles of Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich as well the style ‘His Royal Highness’. A large part of Philip’s success before his marriage into the British Royal
Family was due to his naval service. In some respects it had acted as a surrogate family with comrades taking the place of relatives. Instead of being a powerless victim of his dysfunctional family’s circumstances the navy had enabled him to demonstrate his own personal courage and earn respect from others on his own terms. For the rest of his life, Philip’s determination to be his own man always shone through, despite his personal devotion to the Queen.
It is perhaps not speculative to suggest that the Royal Navy helped to foster this famously independent confidence.