Give my love to Elizabeth
The Queen Mother’s brother – and a desperately poignant letter from the WWI trenches weeks before he died
A MOVING letter sent from the trenches of the First World War by the Queen Mother’s brother is to go on show for the first time.
The note home, penned by Fergus Bowes-Lyon on May 27, 1915, reveals how much he is missing his family, including his younger sister Elizabeth. It also describes the constant risk of artillery fire and gas attacks.
Now, in time for the centenary of his death, the letter – as well as a previously unseen picture of Fergus with the young Queen Mother – is to feature in an exhibition of family mementoes at the Castle of Mey, her beloved home in the far north of Scotland.
Fergus married his sweetheart, Lady Christina Norah Dawson-Damer, daughter of the 5th Earl of Portarlington, in 1914, just two weeks after the outbreak of the war. A few months later he left behind his pregnant wife to fight the Germans in France.
At the family home in Glamis, near Angus, he also left behind his sisters Elizabeth and Rosie and brother David. His brothers, John, Michael and Patrick, were already serving in France.
In his four-page letter, written in pencil on thin notepaper, and addressed to Rosie, Fergus wrote: ‘We always have to have respirators – all ready to put on – as the gas comes very quickly and without warning.’ He ends with a promise to write to Elizabeth. ‘Give my love to Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘Tell her I will write to her shortly, but one does not get much time.’
On July 18, 1915, Christina gave birth to Rosemary Luisa. But, tragically, on September 27, having never met his daughter, Fergus was killed. He was just 26. The exhibition has been curated by Christine Shearer, whose father, the late Reverend George Bell, was minister at Canisbay, where the Queen Mother, who died in 2002 at the age of 101, worshipped. She said: ‘The Queen Mother certainly knew the pain of the First World War.
‘Lady Elizabeth was 15 when Fergus was killed. It must have been quite devastating for her.’
The exhibition opens on May 13.