‘Thanks to his alertness and appreciation of the situation,’ reported his Captain, ‘we were able to sink in five minutes two eight-inch-gun Italian cruisers.’38 Philip spent much of 1941 with the British Fleet in the East Mediterranean. In the spring, Greek resistance to the Germans crumbled, and on 23 April, King George of Greece and his Government were evacuated to Crete. The same day, Princess Elizabeth wrote to Winston Churchill thanking him for a bunch of roses he and his wife had sent her for her fifteenth birthday two days earlier. In her letter, she offered her sympathy, in view of the ‘very worrying time’ he had lately been having.39 Perhaps she had Philip’s recent dangers and exploits, and those of his royal house, partly in mind.
Such an officer was likely to be rapidly promoted in wartime, especially if he had ambition. In Philip’s case, the energy and drive he had shown at Gordonstoun and Dartmouth, together with a view of his own long-term future which received ample encouragement from his Uncle Dickie, helped to push him forward. Mike Parker, a fellow officer who had also been a fellow cadet and later became his equerry, recalls thinking of the Prince as a dedicated professional and as a man heading for the very top: somebody who already ‘had mapped out a course to which he was going to stick . . . a plan already in his mind that had probably been set before he left’.40 In October 1942, Philip was made First Lieutenant and second-in-command of a destroyer, at twenty-one one of the youngest officers to hold such a post.
His adventures continued. The following July, while courtiers in Buckingham Palace exchanged learned memoranda about the date of Princess Elizabeth’s coming-of-age and its constitutional significance, Prince Philip was aboard HMS Wallace off the coast of Sicily, helping to provide cover for the Allied attack and possibly bombarding one of his brothers-in-law, on the German side, in the process. In July 1944, his ship was sent to the Pacific, where he remained until after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and until the final surrender of Japan.41
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth ’scapes, i’ the imminent deadly breach . . .
My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
It is hard to think of an experience of war further removed than that of the Heiress Presumptive, in her castellated schoolroom.
At first, Philip’s busy war provided little scope for contact with the British Royal Family. Shore leaves were brief, makeshift and hectic. Parker felt that it was a bond between him and Prince Philip that both of them were ‘orphans’ (Parker was Australian), with a problem about where to stay.42 In London, Philip was often put up by the Mountbattens, who had been bombed out of previous homes and were living in a house in Chester Street. Mountbatten’s younger daughter Pamela recalls that she and a camp bed would move from room to room to provide space for her cousin, who would ‘come and go and added glamour and sparkle to every occasion’.43 His favours were distributed widely. Queen Alexandra, herself in London at the time, maintained that ‘the fascination of Philip had spread like influenza, I knew, through a whole string of girls’.44 But there was no special girlfriend. According to Parker, ‘never once did I ever find him involved with any particular one. It was very much in a crowd formation’.45 Other stories about Philip in wartime confirm the impression of a hedonistic, though also cashless, socialite whose uniform, looks, charm and connections opened every door – a character out of Evelyn Waugh or Olivia Manning, who popped up wherever in the world there were enough members of the pre-war upper class to hold a party.
Princess Elizabeth was sometimes in his thoughts. Alexandra met up with him in 1941 in Cape Town, where he was on leave from a troop ship. When she came across him writing a letter, he told her it was to ‘Lilibet’. Alexandra assumed – such were the mental processes of displaced royalty – that he was fishing for invitations.46 Perhaps she was right. It was not, however, until the end of 1943 that he was able to accept one of importance. This was to spend Christmas with the Royal Family at Windsor Castle, and to attend the annual Windsor family pantomime.47 Philip accepted, with pleasure.
It was a private invitation. However, both the show, and the Prince’s attendance at it, were reported in the press. In November, it was announced that a stage had been erected in a large hall in the ‘country mansion’ where the princesses were staying; that a cast of forty was rehearsing under the joint direction of Princess Elizabeth and a local schoolmaster, who had together written the script; and that twenty-five village school children would provide the chorus, accompanied by a Guards band.48 A few days before Christmas, The Times reported that ‘Prince Philip of Greece’ had attended the third of three performances, sitting in the front row. Others in the audience included the King and Queen, various courtiers, royal relatives, and villagers.49
According to Lisa Sheridan, Prince Philip was more than just a passive spectator of the seventeen-year-old Elizabeth as she acted, joked, tap-danced and sang a few songs just in front of him. ‘Both in the audience and in the wings he thoroughly entered into the fun, and was welcomed by the princesses as a delightful boy cousin.’50 The pantomime was followed by Christmas festivities. On Boxing Day, there was a family meal at the Castle including retainers, Prince Philip and the young Marquess of Milford Haven. ‘After dinner, and some charades,’ Sir Alan Lascelles recorded in his diary, ‘they rolled back the carpet in the crimson drawing-room, turned on the gramophone, and frisked and capered away till near 1 a.m.’51
Crawfie maintained it was a turning point: thereafter, Elizabeth took a growing interest in Philip’s activities and whereabouts, and exchanged letters with him. The Heiress to the throne enjoyed the idea of being like other girls, she suggested, with a young man in the services to write to.52
IF ELIZABETH only began to think seriously about Philip in December 1943, she was way behind the drifting circuit of European royalty and its hangers on, which had been talking about the supposed relationship, almost as if a marriage was a fait accompli, for two or three years. Of course, Philip’s eligibility as a bachelor prince, together with his semi-Britishness, was likely to make him the subject of conjecture in any case. However, before the end of 1943, the couple had little opportunity to get to know each other. What is curious, therefore, is the firmness of the predictions, and the confidence of the rumours, from quite early in the war.
One of the first to pick up and record the story of an intended marriage, in its definite form, was Chips Channon, befriender of Balkan princelings. He heard it at the beginning of 1941 during a visit to Athens, where the tale seemed to be current among the Greek Royal Family, whose interest had been sharpened by the presence of Prince Philip in their midst, on leave from his ship. After meeting Philip at a cocktail party, Channon noted in his diary, ‘He is to be our Prince Consort, and that is why he is serving in our Navy.’ The alliance between the British and Greek royal houses had supposedly been arranged by the finessing hand of Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten. Philip was handsome and charming, noted Channon, ‘but I deplore such a marriage. He and Princess Elizabeth are too interrelated.’53
Such an item was, of course, no more than gossip, a symptom of the decadence and anxieties of the Greek court. Princess Elizabeth was fourteen at the time, and the notion of the British Government or Royal Family fixing a future marriage alliance with the Greek one is preposterous. According to Mountbatten a few years later, it was at about this time that Philip ‘made up his mind and asked me to apply for [British] naturalisation for him’.54 Perhaps it was news of this plan, combined with Philip’s evident closeness to his British uncle, that inspired the tale. Nevertheless, the existence of such a lively and, as it turned out accurate, rumour nearly three years before a serious friendship is supposed to have started, puts the Prince’s visit to witness the Princess performing into perspective. Had Mountbatten been involved behind the scenes? It is possible. ‘He was a shrewd operator and intriguer, always going round corners, never straight at it,’ says one former courtier from the 1940s, ‘he was ruthless in his approach to the royals.’55 Another suggests: ‘Dickie seems to have planned it in his own mind, but it was not an arranged marriage.’56