Elizabeth II, you rule...

Jubilee Girl

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

She is the only living head of state to have worn a uniform in World War II. Prince Philip, who was taken ill and unable to attend the service in St. Paul’s, is today certainly the only spouse of a head of state to have seen action in that war. On Jubilee Sunday, he smiled as he stood aboard the Royal barge in his admiral’s uniform, 71 years after the 19-year-old Philip Mountbatten had been a junior officer in HMS Valiant at the Battle of Cape Matapan, which sank most of the Italian cruiser fleet in a brilliant night action. His father-in-law, George VI, had likewise been present as a midshipman at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

The queen herself served in the ranks of the ATS, the women’s army service. Its commander-in-chief was her mother, a woman whose life was more than touched by the reality of war. The late Queen Mother’s brother Fergus was killed serving with the Black Watch in 1915, and her nephew John was killed with the Scots Guards in 1941. 


To the impotent rage of malcontents, the country has been swept with delight in the Jubilee and affection for the queen. Every town and village seems to have been swaddled in bunting and Union Jacks, while the splendid flotilla coming down the Thames was watched from the banks by more than a million people, despite the rain (damn it all, this is England). Just as in Housman’s lines, the hills were bright with bonfires, including a fine one in our village, and all culminating with the great service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, where Victoria’s procession had stopped in June 1897. Americans might find this enthusiasm hard to understand, but Churchill provides a clue: The queen and her husband are one of the last surviving links to what “Winny” called our finest hour.

The New Republic