FAMILY TRAUMA, BOARDING SCHOOL AND DUTY WERE THE MAKING OF THE DUKE, SAYS AMANDA CABLE
LIFE changed for Philip when he was ten years old. Enjoying a day out with his older sisters, the siblings returned that evening and found their mother was gone. It was 1931 and, traumatised by the family’s narrow escape from Greece following the fall of the monarchy – with her infant son smuggled to safety in an orange crate – Princess Alice had suffered a nervous breakdown.
The princess was committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland and later diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was treated by famous psychoanalysist Sigmund Freud, who proclaimed that her religious delusions were the product of sexual frustrations and ordered her ovaries to be X-rayed to kill off her libido.
Philip’s four older sisters married Germans and settled in Germany, while his father was living with his mistress in the South of France.
Philip was effectively alone and received no word from his mother (who affectionately knew him as Bubbikins) from 1932 to 1937. Years later, when an interviewer asked him what language he had spoken at home, he replied: ‘What do you mean “at home?”’
In autumn 1933, Philip was sent from his boarding school in Cheam to Schloss Salem in Germany. His brother-in-law later admitted: ‘He had little opportunity to make real friends and he spoke very little German. He was very isolated.’
Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler had come to power and the Hitler Youth Movement infiltrated his school. Philip laughed at their Nazi salutes as it was the same hand gesture the schoolboys used to ask to go to the loo.
The following year, Philip moved to board at Gordonstoun, where the strict regime saw pupils rise at 7am, run barefoot to the washroom and have cold showers every day of the year. Philip excelled under the tough regime and became head boy.
The tragedy that shaped his life came on a cold November day in 1937 when 16-year-old Philip was called into his headmaster’s study to receive terrible news.
There, he was told that his sister Cecilie, who was eight months pregnant, her husband Georg Donatus and their two young sons, Prince Ludwig and Prince Alexander, had died in a plane crash on their way to a family wedding in
London. Cecilie’s widowed mother-inlaw had also died but, tragically, the body of a newborn baby boy was found amid the smoking wreckage.
The plane had hit a factory chimney near Ostend, Belgium, and investigators concluded that Cecilie had either gone into labour during the flight, causing the pilot to become distracted, or had given birth in the force of the crash. Headmaster Kurt Hahn recalled that the young pupil had not broken down and said: ‘His sorrow was that of a man.’
A grief-stricken Philip returned to Germany for the funeral. Just one member of Cecilie’s family had survived – one-year-old daughter Princess Johanna, who had been left at home. Now orphaned, she was cared for by her uncle Prince Ludwig and his wife – but she died two years later of meningitis, and was buried with the rest of her family. Years later, Philip told a biographer: ‘The family broke up. My mother was ill, my sisters were married, my father
Philip’s parents: Prince Andrew of Denmark and Greece and Princess Alice of Battenburg, Germany
was in the South of France. I just had to get on with it. You do. One does.’
Philip travelled alone to Germany for the funerals, where he was reunited with his parents after many years.
He returned to school in the UK under the care of his uncle and guardian, George Mountbatten. But just a few months after losing his sister, George died of cancer and Philip was alone once more.
On the advice of his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Philip enrolled at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in 1939. In January 1941, he joined the battleship HMS Valiant in Alexandria, Egypt, and was in charge of its searchlight during night action at Cape Matapan, Greece, for which he was mentioned in Despatches.
In 1943, an extraordinary act of speed and courage saw 1st Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten save the ship and crew of the destroyer HMS Wallace.
The vessel was under attack from the air and with bombers about to return within 15 minutes, second-incommand Philip hatched a plan. He created a diversion by throwing a wooden raft overboard with smoke floats to look as if it was burning debris in the water. As the vessel sat in darkness, the German plane returned to continue its bombardment.
One sailor recalled: ‘There was no question but to accept that on the next run or the one after we had little chance of survival. We had about 20 minutes to come up with so something. The 1st Lieutenant [P [Philip] went into hurried co conversation with the captain an and, the next thing, a wooden ra raft was being put together on d deck. Within five minutes they la launched a raft over the side – at each end was fastened a smoke float.’
The float drew the enemy fire and the ship sailed away. The sailor added: ‘Prince Philip saved our lives that night. He was always very courageous and resourceful.’
But what had happened to Philip’s absent parents? After being briefly reunited with his son at Cecilie’s funeral, Prince Andrew died in Monte Carlo from heart failure at the end of the war. In 1946, Prince Philip flew to collect some items of his father’s: a signet ring, some clothes – which he had adapted to fit him – and a shaving brush he took to using.
After the war, it transpired that Princess Alice, Philip’s mother, had shown true courage to defy the Nazis. She had helped several Jewish people
Prince Philip saved our lives that night. He was always courageous and resourceful
escape from under the noses of the Nazis and had taken a Jewish family into her home, in hiding. She then used her deafness to prevent the Gestapo from searching her home.
Princess Alice founded an order of nuns in 1949, dedicating her life to caring for the sick. A military coup in 1967 forced her to flee Greece and Philip brought his mother to live with him in Buckingham Palace for her final years.
She died in 1969 aged 84 and, shortly beforehand, knowing the end was near, she wrote him a letter:
‘Dearest Philip, be brave and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.’