Breaker Morant and First World War Author
The Royal British Legion Magazine September 2018 review of The King´s Pilgrimage
THE KING’S PILGRIMAGE, especially republished to mark the Centenary of the 1918 Armistice, is the moving account by the war correspondent Sir Frank Fox, of King George V’s humble journey to the cemeteries of Belgium & France to pay his respects to the Fallen of the First World War.
“Marks the full stop to the Great War. It is a very special book” Field Marshal the Lord Bramall
THE KING’S PILGRIMAGE
An Account of King George V’s Visit to the War Graves in Belgium and France
by Sir Frank Fox
Sir Frank Fox was an Australian-born journalist, soldier, author and campaigner who had lived in Britain since 1909. Prior to The Great War he was a war correspondent for the Morning Star, covering the Balkan Wars, and then in August 1914 was in Belgium where he witnessed the German invasion and the atrocities inflicted upon a soon all but defeated nation, vividly described in his book The Agony of Belgium. Commissioned into the British Army at the age of 41, he was badly injured at the Battle of the Somme, and later served on Haig’s staff at GHQ, the subject of another book in which he described the staff officer’s life as far from an easy one.
King George V had visited the Western Front during the war, he had seen the conditions that the soldiers endured, and had read letters from the trenches, not least those from his own son, The Prince of Wales, who was to experience the sharp end to profound effect. When the war was over, The King expressed a wish to return, ‘with no trappings of state nor pomp or ceremony…..’ on his own private pilgrimage. The visit took place in May 1922, at a time when the cemeteries and memorials were still being built and the landscape looked raw and ragged from four years of death and destruction. By the time his journey along the Western Front had ended, there can be no doubt that he was deeply moved by the experience. Standing in a cemetery close to Boulogne he told the assembled company that ‘Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and maintained individual memorials to their fallen..,’ and he was right. One of the many achievements of this perhaps understated monarch was, for the first time, to find a way of engaging an entire nation, and an empire, in the ongoing act of remembrance.
Frank Fox was a reporter and journalist, and his account of this quiet and dignified visit by The King is written without embellishment, save for the words of Rudyard Kipling, whose poem The King’s Pilgrimage is printed in the opening pages of this slim and enlightening book.
Our King went forth on pilgrimage
His prayer and vows to pay
To them that saved our Heritage
And cast their own away.
The Editor
The King’s Pilgrimage. An Account of King George V’s Visit to the War Graves in Belgium and France. By Sir Frank Fox. Introduction by Dr Charles Goodson-Wickes. Published by Third Millennium Publishing. The book can be ordered at www.sirfrankfox.com
Link to the review: The Guard´s Magazine review
The Times, Tuesday, July 04, 1922; pg. 16; Issue 43074; col C
Our War Graves In France. “The King’s Pilgrimage.”, A Fitting Record.
OUR WAR GRAVES IN FRANCE
“THE KING´S PILGRIMAGE”
A FITTING RECORD.
THE KING´S PILGRIMAGE. (Hodder and Stoughton. 2s. 6d. net.)
The recent visit of the King to the War Cemeteries in France and Belgium- a visit understaken at his own desire- appealed strongly to the imagination of the people of the whole Empire. It has already been made the subject of a noble poem, “The King´s Pilgrimage,” by Mr. Rudyard Kipling; and is now commemorated in this volume bearing the same title published to-day. The proftis from the sale of the book are to be given, by the King´s wish, to the “philanthropic organizations which have for some time been assisting the relatives to visit the cemeteries.”
It is a fitting memorial of a great incident. It contains Mr.Kipling´s poem and over fifty illustrations from photographs taken in the course of the pilgrimage. All the photographs are good, and some make pictures of great beauty ; as conspicuously. a large double-page illustration in the centre of the volume. “The Last Post, Terlinethun,” and, or the smaller photographs, one of the King with Marshal Foch by his side, “Saluting the French colour Party” at notre Dame do Lorette, and one showing the party on the road “Leaving Etaples,” with the tall white Cross of Sacrifice in the brackground.
A SIMPLE TALE.
As potraits of his Makesty, also, many of the photographs are extremely good, notably the last illustration in the volume, showing the King staning alone looking at the row of wooden crosses, and one where he is issuing from the gate of the cemetery at Brandhook. The narrative letterpress is written by Mr.Frank Fox, and is simple and dignificed as it should be. Here and there are passages which it is impossible to read without profound emotion.
Tyne Cot Cemetery is close to the village of Psschendaele. Those who remember the hideous conditions under which our men fought in the later stages of the Flanders campagin of 1917, in the sea of waist-deep mud and foetid slime, will understand the dreadful significance of the fact that “of the nine thousand British soldiers buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery over six thousand are ´unknown´”.
Here again, is the fine incident briefly told. The King was walking with Marshal Foch and Lord Haig, who talked together earnestly:–
The King listened with keen interest, and was clearly delighted at the cordial comradeship of the two great soldiers. He turned to them at one point with the confident query: “Toujours, bons aimis, nést ce pas?” Marshal Foch replied with fervour: “Toujours, toujours, por les mémes causes et les mémes raisons, ” and grapsed Earl Haig´s hand. As the two ;arshals grasped hands in the grip of friendship…”