The King's Speech - Mark Logue [88]
Logue’s guests had been listening in the drawing room and when he went back to join them, he was overwhelmed with congratulations.
He then tried a little joke: ‘Would you like to hear the King speak?’
‘Well, we’ve just heard him,’ replied Gordon.
‘If you go to the two extensions of the phone, you will hear him talk from Windsor.’
During their last run-through, it had been agreed that Logue would call the King after the speech; so he took the main phone and telephoned Windsor, while his guests listened in on the two extensions. A few seconds later, the King’s voice came through.
Logue congratulated him on a wonderful talk, adding: ‘My job is over, Sir.’
‘Not at all,’ the King replied. ‘It is the preliminary work that counts, and that is where you are indispensable.’
The Christmas message was well received, and Logue received a number of letters of congratulations – including one from Hugh Crichton-Miller, a leading psychiatrist who had been based for some time at 146 Harley Street. ‘That broadcast was streets ahead of any previous performance,’ Crichton-Miller wrote to Logue on Boxing Day. ‘One heard the self-expression of a new freedom which was wholly admirable.’
A delighted Logue passed it on to the King, who was flattered by the compliment – and had kind words for his teacher. ‘I do hope you did not mind not being there as I felt that I just had to get one broadcast over alone,’ he wrote back to Logue on 8 January. ‘The preparation of speeches and broadcasts is the important part and that is where all your help is invaluable. I wonder if you realise how grateful I am to you for having made it possible for me to carry out this vital part of my job. I cannot thank you enough.’
Four days later, Logue responded, ‘When we began years ago, the goal I set myself for you was to be able to make a speech without stumbling and talk over the air without fear of the microphone,’ he wrote. ‘As you say, these things are now an accomplished fact, and I would not be human if I were not overjoyed that you can now do these things without supervision.
‘When a fresh patient comes to me the usual query is: “Will I be able to speak like the King?” and my reply is: “Yes, if you will work like he does.” I will cure anyone of intelligence if they will only work like you did – for you are now reaping the benefit of this tremendously hard work you did at the beginning.’
By January 1945 the Germans had been repulsed in the Ardennes without achieving any of their strategic objectives. The Soviets attacked in Poland, moving on to Silesia and Pomerania and advancing towards Vienna. The Western Allies, meanwhile, crossed the Rhine, north and south of the Ruhr, in March, and the following month pushed forward into Italy and swept across Western Germany. The two forces linked up on the River Elbe on May 25. Five days later, the capture of the Reichstag signalled the military defeat of the Third Reich. With Soviet troops only a few hundred yards away, Hitler shot himself in his bunker.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Victory
News of Germany’s surrender in 1945 was met with unbridled enthusiasm and relief
It was one of the greatest – and certainly the most joyous – street parties London had ever seen. On Tuesday 8 May 1945, tens of thousands of singing, dancing people gathered in the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. The moment they had dreamed of for more than five and a half years had finally arrived.
The German surrender had been on the cards for several days: a team of bell ringers was on standby to ring in victory at St Paul’s Cathedral, people stocked up on Union Jack flags and houses were garlanded with bunting. Then at three o’clock, Winston