The Ceremonial Funeral of Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma

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The Ceremonial Funeral of Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma

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As the Leader of the Coffin Bearers at Lord Mountbatten's funeral I kept a diary of every event on each of the days from his death to the day of his funeral. After the funeral, I used the diary entries to write a book which is now, by the kind and gracious permission of The Countess Mountbatten of Burma, at Broadlands. Broadlands is the former home of Lord and Lady Mountbatten at Romsey, Hampshire, England, a delightful place to visit and a must for all devotees of the Mountbatten era.

Parts of the book are reproduced here along with pictures and documents. Please note that whereas coffin bearers, for example, as a part of speech, would be in lower casing unless it began a sentence, here, in this essay, it is in upper casing {capitals} to reflect the specific function of each group as published in the various ORDERS of the day. Please also note that in 1979, WRNS [Woman's Royal Naval Service] were not part of the Royal Navy and women officers were not saluted by male naval personnel. They were mustered and marched/drilled in a women's unit [comprising of navy, army and air force females] with a parade position towards the rear of the procession.

Admiral of The Fleet The Earl Mountbatten of Burma KG, PC, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO was brutally murdered on August Bank Holiday Monday 1979 by the Irish Republican Army [IRA] in County Slygo Northern Ireland. At the time of his death he was on holiday with his family at their Slygo home and was enjoying a boating trip in Slygo Bay on a warm and sunny day. The bomb which had been placed in the boat was exploded by cowards from ashore using a remote radio device. Lord Mountbatten, who was a widower, a father, a grandfather, an uncle and a great uncle died with his fourteen year old grandson Nicholas, his eldest daughter's mother-in-law the Dowager Lady Brabourne and a teenage boy from Slygo. Also in the boat was Lord Mountbatten's eldest daughter Patricia, Lady Brabourne, with her husband Lord Brabourne. They were both seriously injured and hospitalised for a lengthy period unable to attend the funeral of her father, and saddest of all [my words], the funeral of their son Nicholas, a twin. Lady Patricia became The Countess Mountbatten of Burma on that sad and infamous day.

Born of Royal stock at Frogmore, Windsor, in 1900, the great grandson of Queen Victoria and christened Louis Francis Arthur Victor Nicholas Battenberg, he was called Dicky by his family and friends. His father was also Prince Louis of Battenberg . In 1917, King George V founded the House of Windsor, and Battenberg became Mountbatten. Both he and his father became the First Sea Lord.

On the very same day at Warren Point Northern Ireland, 18 young paratroopers were blown up and killed by an IRA land mine.

The British people were stunned by these beastly murders and there was great national mourning. Just two years before, in 1977, the popular Mountbatten's had maintained a high profile to help Her Majesty The Queen celebrate Her Silver Jubilee, the event being a qualified success throughout the land. Lord Mountbatten was an uncle to HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and of course a great uncle to his children. It was said that HRH The Prince of Wales saw Lord Louis as a hero, much enjoying his company and his wisdom. He was clearly adored by the Royal family and he was a warm and enthusiastic supporter of its modus operandi.

Just one short month before, on my 41st birthday the 27th July 1979, whilst appointed as the Officer of the Watch [OOW] in HMS Mercury, I had met Lord Mountbatten during his last visit to attend the Signal Officers Reunion.

My book starts with the following statement.

"This is a personal and factual account of the events leading to the funeral of Lord Louis Mountbatten, covering the period Monday 27th August to Friday 7th September 1979.

Each event, occasion and venue, was recorded at the end of each day in my diary, the contents of which were used to compile this essay.

The essay was written during the remaining days of September and was completed on the 15th October 1979"

It is then dedicated as follows:-

DEDICATED TO:

The lasting memory of Lord Mountbatten; to his family who died with him and to all those who live to continue the illustrious name of Mountbatten.

My Service, the Royal Navy, with my eternal gratitude for allowing me to represent them as the leader of the London Bearer Party.

The Bearers themselves for all their hard work, their loyalty, and for bringing lasting credit upon the Communications Branch and HMS Mercury.

My family, who from this honour shared in my immeasurable pride to the full.

I received the following letter from HRH The Prince of Wales five days after the funeral

PRINCE CHARLES TAKEN IN 1977.jpg

[For the purists. HRH referred to Kelly Squadron but he really meant GT Section, where I, with my boss Lieutenant Commander Rodney Cave Royal Navy, were the technical equipment instructors for the PWO[C] course on which the POW was a course member].

A list of the London Bearer Party

BEARERS:

Lieutenant R E Doyle Royal Navy	HMS Excellent
FCRS G Dykes	HMS Mercury
CRS E N Davies	HMS Mercury
CRS D Timmington	HMS Mercury
LRO R Milne	HMS Mercury
LRO C J Williams	HMS Mercury
LRO T Foster	HMS Mercury
LRO I B Murphy	HMS Mercury
LRO M B Watson	HMS Mercury
RO1 S D Whitham	SM2 Devonport

TRAINER:

CPO J H Elliott

HMS Excellent

HAT BEARERS:

LRO D Lovatt	CTF 345 Northwood
Cook C Eames	HMS Mercury

SPARE NUMBERS:

LRO H R Jackson	HMS Mercury
RO1 G B Vaughan	HMS Mercury

Click on the map on the left to see the actual procession route.

All subsequent extracts from my book will be shown within a single table.

At 0645 on Tuesday morning the 28th of August 1979, I received a telephone call from the Duty Lieutenant Commander [DLC] HMS Mercury telling me that I had to report to HMS Excellent the Naval Gunnery and Ceremonial Training School in Portsmouth by 0830 that morning for a briefing and selection process. I reported for duty wearing civilian clothing, and attended a briefing on outline planning; I was also provisionally told that I would play a major part in the Ceremony either in London or in Romsey. The rest of the day was spent in discussion with fellow warrant officers, who like myself, had been recalled from leave or who had volunteered for this prestigious duty.

During the first day the Ceremonial Training Staff were continuously frustrated because not enough ratings were reporting for training owing to recall difficulties. Many of the sailors had just completed an arduous three days supporting Portsmouth Navy Days which finished on Monday the 27th, and their promised 'reward' leave had to be cancelled.

All UK VIP funerals are planned in advance and always with the knowledge, and acquiescence of the VIP concerned. Recently we have witnessed the very private funeral of HRH The Princess Margaret Countess of Snowdon culminating with a cremation in Slough. If you are interested in Royal funerals I recommend to you Olivia Bland's book The Royal Way of Death ISBN 0 09 465430 1, which has a section on Lord Mountbatten's funeral. Once you start, you will not put it down - it is a compelling read.

Funerals for members of the Royal family excluding The Monarch and based on precedents , are usually wholly private both Church and graveside; public lying-in-state and all things afterwards private; full London Ceremonial culminating with a private burial or reduced London Ceremonial culminating with a private burial. An example of each of these is respectively HRH The Princess Margaret Countess of Snowdon; HM Queen Mary; Admiral of The Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Diana, The Princess of Wales. The Monarch always receives a State funeral as do those whose service to this country is unique in their life time, but only with The Monarch's permission. There are only four such persons who have qualified namely Lord Nelson in 1806 {died in 1805 aged 47 of his wounds received at the Battle of Trafalgar and is buried in St Paul's Cathedral}, Duke of Wellington in 1852 {died at Walmer Castle Kent aged 83 and buried in St Paul's Cathedral}, Mr William Gladstone in 1898 {aged 88 and buried in Westminster Abbey} and Sir Winston Churchill in 1965 {aged 90 and is buried at Bladon near Blenheim Palace}.

Before continuing with British funerals let us take a quick look at the funeral of Britain's arch enemy of 18th and 19th century, namely Napoleon Bonaparte, or more correctly Napoleon I. Napoleon died in British captivity on the South Atlantic island of St Helena in 1821, but his body was not repatriated to France until 1840. On arrival back in Paris, he was given a full State funeral after which he was laid to rest in St Jerome's Chapel. In 1861, a full forty years after his death, Bonaparte was finally laid to rest at LES INVALIDES [which translated, means 'The Valid One'] in Paris. Like all 19th century State funerals, no expense was spared, and Napoleon's body lies within six separate coffins. They are made of iron, mahogany, two of lead, ebony, and the outer one is red porphyry. The tomb sits on a green-granite pedestal surrounded by 12 pillars of victory. In that same decade, 1865, the assassinated U.S. President [shot on the 14th of April] Abraham Lincoln was laid to rest in Springfield Illinois after a long journey by train with many lyings-in-state at various stops along the way starting with the White House; Capitol Hill, New York City Hall etc. Twelve days after the assassination on April 26th, the U.S. Cavalry shot dead the assassin, the other four implicated [three men and a women] being hanged together in public on July the 7th. Hanging was regularly practiced in the U.S.A., but either the skill of the drop - to achieve instant death - was not perfected, or they wanted the victims to suffer, and by so doing, ensuring that the audience got value for money! Andrew Johnson, the new President and other members of the Executive were convinced that the assassination of the President and the planned assassinations of himself as the Vice President and the Secretary of State, were 'ordered' from the South by the Confederacy. If Johnson did order the victims to suffer, the hangman met his request in full for it took in excess of five minutes to strangle the group of four to death. A sixth person, accused of holding a horse which the assassin would have used to make his escape, received seven years in prison.

Since much of my story is about the ceremony at state/ceremonial funerals, I couldn't pass this section without referring to Lord Nelson's state funeral, a hero without parallel even to this very day. Tom Pocock's book Horatio Nelson {ISBN 0 304 32240 7} published by Cassell Publishers Limited of Artillery Row, London is a 'must have' book for all who seek to understand this subject more fully. I am on my third read {over a 10 year period}, and would suggest that Tom Pocock is the ultimate authority on Nelson and the naval scene over the 100 years from mid 18th to mid 19th century. In the Epilogue to his book, Tom Pocock tells of what happened when the Victory arrived back in UK waters, what happened to Lord Nelson's family and the fate of Lady Hamilton, and gives an account of the ceremony at his funeral. First, note that the Victory had arrived at the Nore, near to the mouth of the River Thames in Southeast England and near to Chatham, Kent, where she was built. Here is a short snippet. " The body was placed into the coffin made from the mainmast of the l'Orient seven years before and which he had prized with such grim humour; appropriately, this was done on board the Victory*. The coffin was then encased in another of lead and this, in turn, within one of wood and taken up the Thames to Greenwich, accompanied by Nelson's chaplain, Alexander Scott, and John Tyson. There it lay in state for three days in the Painted Hall before being escorted to a funeral barge by five hundred naval pensioners, many of whom had known Nelson when young. The boat itself was his own barge from the Victory, pulled by his own crew, and the accompanying mourners were led by two of his old commanding officers, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Peter Parker, who had recognised his talents in the West Indies a quarter of a century before, and Admiral Hood, who had given him his head in the Agamemnon and who was now Governor of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich. {This picture is of Permit number 476 to Admit, one, Charles Burney Esq into St Paul's Cathedral. I am very grateful to The Secretary of the Navy Club at Southsea, Portsmouth for allowing me to photograph and use this Permit, and to Commander Alan Norris RN Rtd., for kindly arranging the event}. {I am informed that the latin phrase could be either "you are in the presence of one who has served with courage" OR "It is splendid to serve [as a soldier or warrior - or sailor in this case] with courage - or fiercely"} Nelson's body was taken to London in a procession of black-draped boats and barges between banks lined by thousands. It was no stately progress because this boat-service, like those in his life, was dogged by problems; on this occasion by a south-westerly gale. So, as the flotilla approached the Tower of London and the great dome of St Paul's and the minute-guns began to boom, his arrival by boat was once again attended by the sound of wind and gunfire. The coffin was landed at Whitehall stairs and taken to the Admiralty where it lay that night in the small panelled room to the left of the entrance hall still attended by the chaplain. He was buried next day, Thursday, 9th January, 1806, with all the pomp at the nation's command. Now encased both in the wood of the l'Orient and an outer coffin covered with black velvet and decorated with gilded emblematic and heraldic devices, he was borne through the streets of London on a funeral car designed to suggest a ship of the line. Nearly ten thousand soldiers marched in the procession that was so long that its head had reached the cathedral before the rear had left Whitehall. Sailors from the Victory walked ahead of their dead admiral carrying the white ensign that the ship had flown off Cape Trafalgar, sometimes opening the folds to show the shot-holes to the silent crowds. The body of Nelson was accompanied along the Strand and Fleet Street by friends who remembered him there, including Alexander Davison and William Haslewood. Thirty-one admirals and a hundred captains attended him, often meeting each other face to face after years of separation by the sea, having conversed only by signal-flags read through telescopes. Through the silent streets the procession wound to the slow beat of the Dead March played on fifes and muffled drums and, as the funeral car approached, a ruffling sound ran ahead of it as the men watching from pavement, windows and rooftops, bared their heads. The funeral service lasted for four hours without one single woman being present, neither his wife Frances [Fanny] nor his lover Lady Hamilton, as was the custom of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. Beneath the dome hung a chandelier of a hundred and thirty lamps; below the floor of the aisle an elevator had been built to lower the coffin into the crypt. All took place according to hopes and plans - the perfect, sunlit winter's day: the well-ordered procession and the immense, reverent crowds - until the last moment. Then the forty-eight seamen from the Victory were to fold the battle-ensign and lay it upon the coffin; but, when the time came, they rent a sheet of cloth from the flag and tore it into pieces: one for each man. It was an impulsive, emotional initiative worthy of Nelson himself. When the coffin was at last lowered into the crypt it was laid in a black marble sarcophagus originally designed for Cardinal Wolsey three centuries before. "
*The l'Orient was the Flagship of the French Admiral Brueys at the Battle of the Nile [Aboukir Bay] which Nelson, in Vanguard thoroughly defeated the French fleet. l'Orient's destruction was spectacular. She was an enormous ship, 120 guns and was first attacked by the Bellerophon [74 guns] who was severely damaged. The Swiftsure [74 guns] and the Alexander [74 guns] took over and between them set fire to the Frenchman. One hour later she blew up with an explosion so immense that the battle stopped for ten minutes.

Perhaps the best example of a very private Royal funeral was that of Prince Albert The Prince Consort at which there was no Pageantry, no women, not even his wife Queen Victoria who was inconsolably bereaved and domiciled at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

Lord Mountbatten therefore received a full London Ceremonial funeral.

The outline planning, obviously done before the death has enough detail to make it easily convertible into an operations order the moment the person is known to have died. In Lord Mountbatten's case, it was suggested that he had almost written the whole of the outline planning document, which in itself was very detailed involving no fewer that 507 personnel from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. In his official biography, an excellent book written by Philip Ziegler and published by Book Club Associates by arrangement with William Collins Sons and Co Ltd, Philip Ziegler describes Lord Mountbatten's approach to the task of planning his own funeral. By the time the General Officer Commanding London District had written his actual funeral operations order, Mountbatten's numbers had increased three-fold. As an example I have included just the front page of each of the orders [outline and operational] which are, regrettably, difficult to reproduce here. The outline planning document dated 1977 was a revision of the outline planning document dated 1975 and is a Naval document; the funeral proper, is the Army document dated the 31 August 1979, a few days after the Slygo murders.

Each document has many more pages with planning down to the very last detail. Here, I must tell you that not all in the OP Order followed the request made by Lord Mountbatten, namely, that the Bearers should be members of the Communications Branch of which, he was the senior member. In the 70's, HMS Mercury [the alma mater for all Communicators] had a First Lieutenant and an appointed Assistant, known as XL {Executive Lieutenant}. Officers appointed to this job were not necessarily Communicators although many were. In 1979, XL was an aviator who had pranged his helicopter whilst flying too close to a destroyer! When he appeared in HMS Excellent as being the second officer {as per op order} from HMS Mercury - Gordon Perry was the other officer and a proper Communicator - the Whale Island 'mafia' seized upon the opportunity to replace him. If HMS Mercury could not supply a Communicator, then the prestigious job was up for grabs, and Lieutenant Robert E Doyle, of HMS Excellent replaced HMS Mercury's XL. After the funeral, Bob Doyle wrote to me saying that he would always consider himself an honourary member of the Communications Branch and no other officer could have performed that job better than he did. Lord Mountbatten would not have been displeased.

On Wednesday morning I arrived in HMS Excellent at 0815. The weather was warm and sunny and my thoughts were with Lord and Lady Brabourne and their son Timothy who were in hospital in Slygo recovering from their wounds received in the cowardly boat bombing; they would miss the funerals of their son Nicholas, Lady Brabourne's father and Lord Brabourne's mother.

It was a hectic day in every sense for all concerned, both instructors and students. We had so many problems that at times some of them seemed insurmountable. Approximately three hundred men of every age, shape, size, frame of mind, who had come mainly from the Portsmouth and Plymouth areas, arrived in dribs and drabs. Just about all of them were in need of a hair cut, and because HMS Excellent was in the middle of summer leave, there was no barber available and the men were not particularly displeased with our obvious predicament.

Some years ago it was decided that the traditional sailors suit [the type I had worn from 1953 until 1963] was outdated and should be replaced. The time scale for sailors to change from the old to the new {a more relaxed and informal style of uniform} style suits [considered hideous by many of us older hands] was extended until late 1979 or early 1980. On that Wednesday, half our three hundred sailors had the old suits and the other half the new ones, or, none at all [they had been left at home]. To complicate matters further, of these three hundred men, there were many Chief Petty Officers and Petty Officers who had volunteered for the Gun Carriages Crew. They had to be dressed as ordinary ratings in sailors suits, and therefore they had to swap the peaked-cap [fore and aft rig] for a round-cap [square rig]. They were subsequently issued with a full sailors uniform [new style] at no cost to themselves; the suits being written off the by Ministry of Defence.

For Ceremonial to be effective, sizing of men with similar stature is essential but almost impossible with twenty percent of the men to be sized out of HMS Excellent in civilian barber shops being shorn of their over long hair. No sooner had a six foot tall rating been put alongside a five foot eleven inch tall rating and the two paired for a specific position, than a new six foot tall sailor would arrive and the original pair split up, re-paired and re-briefed.

A rather sweet young lady arrived in HMS Excellent at lunch time having been recruited as a temporary ships barber. The sailors soon got wind that she was a 'hair butcher' and the last I saw of that drama was a room full of young Wrens awaiting the scissors, and at least one of them had very wet eyes!

From lunch time onwards things began to gel, and by tea time of a glorious day, sizing was near completion.

At 1730 I was officially informed that I was to have the lead part in the Ceremonial London funeral and that I had to pick eight very strong and physically similar sailors [with two spares] for the London Bearers, and that FCCY Leslie Murrell MBE, the Romsey Warrant Officer, would pick his team for Romsey Abbey where the private burial would take place. The pride I felt at being told what function I had to execute was immense and immeasurable, and I became rather emotional. I went to the toilet to be alone, to be in reach of something to wipe a tear and to wash away its stain. My thoughts were racing and I was trying to imagine what the actual event would be like and whether or not my recurring stomach illness [I had major abdominal surgery in 1976] and my left knee [which partially seizes after long walks] would let me down and bring irreversible disgrace upon myself. I was 41 and in the twilight years of my naval career. The funeral of a murdered Royal would obviously be an emotional time for the nation and for all those who were to take part in the Ceremony. In the privacy of my surroundings I found it difficult to believe that I had the honour to represent the Royal Navy.

After sizing, sailors were put into Groups and assigned to special tasks e.g., Bearer Parties, Gun Carriages Crew, Marching Escort and Westminster Abbey Lining Party. The Navy also supplied many officers and ratings for Street Lining, but HMS Collingwood undertook the training of this Group, and apart from seeing these men at rehearsals in London and the day of the funeral proper, we never met or worked with them.

Several professional barbers were promised for the next day. Payment was organised to cover the days ahead, and a mobile clothing store would be on hand for new caps, boots, suits etc., at a price.

Before I mention the Gun Carriage in this funeral, I want to tell you about how the Royal Navy started its association with it, at State and Ceremonial funerals.

This picture shows Eastney Royal Marines Barracks. In the centre of the picture from foreground to background is the Marines accommodation block. To the left of it and not far from being the same length, is the indoor Drill Shed. To the right there are two grassed areas with a large Parade Ground in the middle, and to the top and upper middle right, the sea and promenades.

Used as a Hearse, the Gun Carriage is a 20th century precedent, at least for the Royal family. Before that time, the Hearse was a horse drawn vehicle bedecked with heavy funereal artefact, the horses as much as the funeral car, and the followers were usually pedestrian. When a Royal died in residence, that is at Windsor Castle as did George III, George IV, William IV [Victoria's immediate predecessors] and Prince Albert, their funerals were 'in-house' as it were, negating the need for Ceremonies outside the Castle, and certainly not in London.

London had not long ago witnessed the 'funeral of all funerals' [but on a par with that of Lord Nelson in 1806] and certainly one of the longest Processional routes of all time, when in 1852 the nation said its goodbye to the Duke of Wellington, just 9 years before Albert's very private funeral. It was calculated that those wishing to say goodbye to The Duke of Wellington would be so great, that they built a funeral car of enormous height to be pulled by many horses, [16] , on top of which they placed his Coffin in clear view to all from Chelsea Pensioners home to St Paul's Cathedral. Those of you who know London will appreciate this huge distance! That funeral car is preserved and on show at The Duke's ancestral home at Stratfield Saye in Hampshire, another must for history buffs.

When Queen Victoria died at Osborne House in 1901 she was the first Monarch to die away from Windsor since George II who died at Kensington Palace in 1760. It was she who had the first of the State/Ceremonial funerals we speak of today, where the Monarch's body has a lying- in- state [ usually in Westminster's Great Hall with plaques in the floor to show where each and every Monarch has laid -in- state in years gone by, [another big must for Royalists]] so that their subjects could pay homage and say goodbye, followed by a Ceremonial Procession through the streets of London to Paddington Railway Station and from there by Royal Train to Windsor. At Windsor, the Ceremony would continue with a second Procession from the Railway Station leading to the steep steps outside the West Door of St George's Chapel in the Castle. There, the Church Service would take place and the Monarch's Coffin would be lowered into the central vault. At a later time and in private, the Monarch's Coffin would be moved to its appointed place usually within the Chapel [though Albert and then Victoria were moved out of the church and the Castle to the Mausoleum at Frogmore within the grounds of Windsor Castle] to rest in peace. There are 11 Monarchs at rest in the Chapel.

At Queen Victoria's death, her body was moved from Osborne to Cowes on the Isle of Wight and thence to the mainland, with great dignity . Victoria's London funeral was a splendid affair befitting her 64 years on the Throne [1837-1901] at a time when Britannia really did rule the waves. This picture from Olivia Bland's The Royal Way of Death, gives one the overall feeling of State Pageantry with the footmen and horses almost dressed for a happier event like a Coronation.

However, the Windsor Ceremonial funeral was a shambles as the following text and picture shows . Note how the sailors are looking everywhere instead of to their fronts. It must have been extremely embarrassing for all who observed this undignified scene. The text comes from another excellent book which I recommend called Whaley - The story of HMS Excellent.

With Queen Victoria the precedent was set, namely that from henceforward, the Monarch [irrespective where he or she died] would have a State funeral with Ceremonial in London and in Windsor, and this has continued with the deaths of Edward VII, George V [front cover] [back cover] and George VI. Queen Victoria's London Ceremony, as you have seen, had, as a centre piece, a Gun Carriage pulled by horses from the Royal Household whereas Edward the VII's London Ceremony was centred around a Gun Carriage pulled by the Royal Horse Artillery. The Royal Navy's involvement with the Gun Carriage for both London and Windsor State Ceremonial started with the funeral of George V.

Since you have now read the reason for the Royal Navy having the privilege of pulling the Monarch's Coffin on a Gun Carriage it becomes obvious that there must be a Gun Carriage in London and a separate Gun Carriage in Windsor. Two quite separate Crews would be required each with different skills and training. It fell to Chatham, the Naval Base in Kent [and closer to London than Portsmouth] to supply and man the London Ceremonial Gun and for Portsmouth, the Naval Base in Hampshire, the Windsor Gun. The Chatham Gun was kept and maintained at Woolwich {see also HMS PEMBROKE [at Chatham] GUN CARRIAGE.jpg} and the Portsmouth Gun in HMS Excellent. The basic difference in training was that London is more or less flat with exceptions like Ludgate Hill in the City [for St Paul's], but Windsor has steep hills which could be darn right dangerous. Here are two pictures of King George VI's funeral at Windsor, the one on the left explicitly showing the hilly terrain, but the one on the right hides the fact that the front drag-ropes are about to go into first gear at the foot of the hill ahead of them . The Gun had to be taken from the Windsor Railway Station to the step's at the West Door of St George's Chapel within the Castle, which as the crow flies is a short distance [I would guess somewhere near 200 meters]. However, because that 200 or so meters was up and down hills [and very steep hills at that] the Gun travelled in a zig zag fashion along parallel streets until the approach to the main private vehicular entrance [now also the main entrance to the Castle for pedestrian visitors] was less of a challenge. The up hill task led to the Castle's Upper Ward [the Royal apartment's are in the Upper Ward], past the statue of Charles II, down through the Norman Gate into the Middle Ward, and then down hill into the Lower Ward ultimately to the main entrance of St Georges Chapel. This challenge involved great strength [up hill by the men in front pulling, and down hill by the men behind acting as a brake] whilst all the time keeping their timing, their bearing and their dignity, trained not to show the physical strain they were under and conscious that they were the 'engine' of the Royal carriage bearing the coffin of our much loved and deceased Monarch. Believe you me, a great honour for those sailors.

These next pictures are of the funerals of Edward VII, George V, George VI, Winston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten. Clearly, the Navy had mastered the necessary technique at these funerals! The other pictures show the Royal Navy ranks the Royal Family held in in the late 70's early 80's. The events between death and burial of a Monarch are sometimes confused, and the word Funeral is taken to mean an event. In reality, there are several events [at least more than one] as the following example shows. When King George VI died in 1952 at Sandringham, his coffin, pre-made of Sandringham oak just like that for his father King George V] was taken from Sandringham House to the tiny estate church of St Mary Magdalene, a typical village church, small, dignified, peaceful, in which the King worshipped every Sunday during his residence at the house and where Estate workers stood their vigil for three full days of total and utter privacy. Then, on the fourth day [the sixth day after death], the coffin was taken on a horse-drawn Gun Carriage [RHA]: [this gun carriage was the gun carriage used at the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in London] to the local Railway Station of Wolferton and brought to London by train to Kings Cross, where from, and only ten days before, he had left London for his beloved Sandringham: that was phase one and two. At London's Kings Cross station, his coffin was met with all the trappings of State and was taken in a Ceremonial Procession by a RHA-drawn Gun Carriage supplied by Woolwich , to his Lying-in-State Ceremony at Westminster Hall some three miles away with countless thousands looking on : phase three. The next phases involved the Royal Navy and its two Gun Carriage's to the full, phase four being from Westminster Hall to Paddington Railway Station [a one mile journey via Whitehall, St James's Street, Edgware Road, Sussex Gardens etc.,] where the King left his sorrowing and mourning London, to phase five , from Paddington to Windsor and Eton Railway Station, and thence, phase six from the station to St Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle, all phases constituent parts of the Funeral. The steam locomotive which pulled the Kings coffin from Paddington was called the Windsor Castle and had a Royal Crown on top of its engine just forward of the engine funnel. It is important to understand this, because subsequently, any one of the four Gun Carriage's used for King George VI, could be used as the Gun Carriage for a Ceremonial Funeral as was the case for Lord Mountbatten, and more recently, HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Whilst I am not qualified to comment upon army ceremonial at Royals funerals, it is my understanding that the guards also alternated [as did our naval gun carriages] for King George VI funeral, where, at Kings Cross station, the coffin was borne by Coldstream Guards en route to Westminster Hall, but for the State Funeral proper, by members of the Kings Troop Grenadier Guards.

An extremely interesting WEB site visit for Royal deaths is to be found at http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~canyon/
and for Sir Winston Churchill at http://www.havengore.com/havewsc.htm

The Gun I am now going to talk about is the Portsmouth Gun and therefore, the Windsor Gun.

The Gun Carriage, which had been used for King Edward VII, King George V, King George VI and Sir Winston Churchill, was brought out of its show case and made ready for another Ceremonial funeral. It was a massive and beautiful object weighing nearly three tons. It had been given to the Royal Navy for safe keeping by King George V after the funeral of his father King Edward VII, and it had [has] pride of place in the centre of HMS Excellent covered by a glass case.

It was not until Friday morning when Mr Michael Kenyon, the Royal undertaker, sent the measurements of the Coffin that we realised the Gun Carriage Coffin platform was about two inches too short at six foot six inches. The Shipwright Officer and his staff had to add a two inch block to the head-end, and thereafter, to re-site the Coffin locking bar which was to hold the Coffin in position during its journey from St James's Palace to Westminster Abbey. They did a good job, and the colour matching and texture of paint to match the Guns deep green, was perfect. We saw little of this Gun in our Portsmouth practice days and we used a Royal Artillery Gun in lieu which had been used in London for the State funeral of King Edward VII.

The second day ended at 2030 and I travelled home with men who had been brought in from the aircraft carrier HMS Bulwark. We talked of nothing else but the forthcoming event and of how proud we were to be involved. I got indoors at 9pm very tired, but from now on, very high on the event to come. I hardly slept a wink!

On the 30th August we began training for real at the Royal Marines Barracks at Eastney, Southsea. I had gone there by car, but the bulk of our manpower was transported daily to and fro between HMS Excellent and Eastney by lots of RN thirty-six seater coaches. Eastney was used because the traditional training area, the Parade Ground at HMS Excellent was being used to stage the Royal Naval Equipment Exhibition [RNEE] , and because of leave, there were no Royal Marines in the Barracks, so we had the place to ourselves.

RMB Eastney then*** was ideal for our purposes and the glorious early autumn weather allowed us to use the large Parade Ground and the equally large indoor Drill Shed to best advantage. The Royal Marines museum was open for business as usual, and so from the word go those Groups training on the Parade Ground were open to inspection by the public visiting the museum as well as by holiday makers viewing from the Barracks perimeter railing which ran along the sea front parallel to the promenade. The public therefore witnessed our early training and all the errors of drill we made. They must have viewed the event with horror and feared for the great British Pageantry.

*** Eastney today, is now a partition where the officers mess/wardroom is the Royal Marines Museum; the barracks proper is now called Marine Gate Estate, a mixture of various types of properties. However defined, a sad place today compared with the Home of Royal Marines proper many of whom took part in this, the last of the massive and splendid Royal Funerals. It is doubly upsetting, that this area is now the venue for wedding receptions and other parties where the Museum Authorities themselves sell alcohol resulting in the encouragement of loutish behaviour bringing the dignity of the Museum to an unacceptable level.

From about 0930 until lunch we practiced the 'Bearers slow march' which was painfully slow and laboured, by slow marching up and down the Parade Ground. The normal Naval way of marching [or walking for that matter] is to step off with the left foot swinging the right arm forward, although one often sees the left arm working with the left leg when people are trying a little too hard to remember what comes naturally! If a member of a Group, the only real worry is to remember to keep in step and to move in unison. Marching with a Coffin, where each man steps off with his inside foot i.e., left hand four men with their right foot and the others with their left foot keeping step with the person marching in front of the Coffin, is not so easy. This method of marching was alien to Naval Ceremony which dictates that the first bang on the drum on stepping off should coincide with the left foot. The reason for marching in this peculiar fashion is to stop the Coffin from swaying side to side, and synchrony of step had to be achieved before we started to use the practice Coffin. By the time we broke off for lunch we were coping well as a team, and I sensed a growing esprit de corps and pride of purpose amongst my charges young and not so young!

Lunch, on all our days in Eastney was a cold salad buffet brought ready to serve from HMS Excellent. It was adequate for the men with soup and fresh fruit or fruit yogurt, but a monotonous diet. Like so many others, I had too much on my mind to be really interested in food. Whatever, the catering staff had a difficult job to feed three hundred odd men on a self service basis in less than one hour, and they did it well without complaints.

During my lunch break I talked with many civilians, holiday makers who had entered RMB Eastney ostensibly to see the museum but the sound of the Royal Marines Mass Bands had been too much of an attraction for them. They were elderly couples in the main, full of sympathy, who were keen to know what was going on. During that first day of training, I had a sneaking suspicion that the ladies were dying to mother young sailors, and the men were dying to smother others for their incompetence and mistakes. I should record here for posterity, that none of our men was Ceremonially trained [like many soldiers are] but ordinary sailors - cooks, stewards, engine room men, computer men, clerks etc - who had volunteered or who had been detailed. The Instructors too, although excellent men and proficient in their trade, were not immediately conversant with the special drill procedures. The last time the Royal Navy had trod the streets of London pulling a Gun Carriage was fourteen years ago at the State funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, and the expertise gained during that time had long since been lost to the Service. I wonder whether these same elderly couples who watched the funeral Ceremony changed their minds about our Military Bearing?

After lunch two Coffins arrived from HMS Excellent each with its own Union Flag/Union Jack ? {This URL will take you to an excellent WEB site http://www.flaginstitute.org/fiunionflag.htm which will settle any argument}.

Additionally, each Coffin had its own weights and trestles. One was made of ordinary pine and the other was painted grey. We, the London Group took one Coffin plus accessories to one end of the Drill Shed and the Romsey Group theirs to the other end. From this time on, both Groups practiced in the privacy of the Drill Shed away from the Parade Ground, the civilian on-lookers and the inevitable ghouls. From the beginning, the very obvious requirement of knowing how heavy the actual Coffin would be was to be kept from us despite many enquiries. The time we did get to know we were lifting it on the evening before the funeral day at St James's Palace! We were regularly told that the Grenadier Guardsmen who carried Sir Winston Churchill, carried one thousand pounds, and many speculated that Lord Louis's Coffin would be similarly constructed of solid oak and lined with lead. We were given four large sand bags and told authoritatively [in a manner of speaking] that the Coffin plus the sand would give us a realistic training weight. It was comforting to know that Leslie Murrell and his Romsey Bearers were doing exactly the same thing. Training started with an empty Coffin so that we could get the orders and corresponding movements worked out before putting the muscles to work. The movements were basic and soon mastered. They involved the Bearers slow marching, with our special step, towards the Coffin, halting when the two sailors who carry the feet-end arrived at the head of the Coffin, turning inwards to face one another, raising their hands to chest height palms uppermost, both feet-men pulling the Coffin off its rest platform using the head handles, and the Bearers passing the Coffin down amongst them by hand movements. When all their hands were in place, the order was given to lift. At this order the Bearers raised the Coffin to shoulder height and at the same time they would turn to face the feet-end of the Coffin, putting their inner arms onto the shoulder of their opposite Bearer and simultaneously lowering the Coffin onto their shoulders. They were then ordered to turn a given number of degrees in a given direction so that on completion of the turn, the Coffin, which always travels feet first [secular], was pointing towards the right direction. The next stage was a little more difficult because it involved the strange marching I mentioned earlier, namely, making sure that the Coffin did not sway. We soon mastered this march and then concentrated on avoiding the embarrassment of me unknowingly racing ahead of the Coffin and losing control because my orders would not be heard; or, and of equal importance, going too slow and getting a bang at the back of my head. Chief Radio Supervisor Timmington [Tim] assumed the responsibility of telling me to slow down or to speed up from a basic step governed by an imaginary built in metronome of tick-tock, which I uttered to myself throughout training and on the big day itself.

The afternoon was broken up by the NAAFI tea lorry arriving which was to come morning and afternoon on Friday and Saturday. It coped well with all the men's drink and sandwich requirements, although to avoid bottlenecks the officers and senior rates had their own tea-boat in a room off the Drill Shed. Men were released to attend the promised barber now incumbent in Eastney, and also to go to the two large Naval clothing vans which were busy selling article's of new uniform for cash or on the slate [known in the Navy as the ledger].

In addition to not knowing the true weight of the coffin, we were also to experience order and counter order from nebulous sources of information, Two such events were to affect our involvement in the purchase of kit. We were told that Westminster Abbey would be carpeted from the Great West Door to the Lantern as it is on all Royal occasions. This would create problems when marching because the step cannot be heard and the rhythm can easily be lost. It would be difficult to 'glide' along on a carpet with rubber soled shoes. Therefore, it was decided that all the London Bearers would wear the same style of shoe with leather soles and heels. In 1979 only officers shoes met this criterion [ratings shoes being totally unsuitable for Ceremonial anyway] but they were approximately seventeen pounds Sterling a pair compared with approximately four pounds for ratings shoes. Reluctantly, I ordered all the men to purchase officers style shoes with a promise that when I returned to normal duty, I would do my best to get the difference of thirteen pounds reimbursed. Several weeks later, these men each received the full seventeen pounds back at the suggestion of the Captain of HMS Mercury, Captain S D S Bailey Royal Navy. As well as new shoes I also bought a new white plastic cap cover and a new cap badge. Later, on Friday, we heard that there would be no carpet in Westminster Abbey after all, but worst still, the sailors of the Bearer Party would have to wear boots with white webbing and not shoes. It looked as though the sailors would now have to buy a pair of boots in addition to shoes, but after a rather heated telephone call between myself and a Chief Petty Officer in HMS Nelson followed by an amicable person to person discussion with a fellow W.O. , it was agreed that my men would only sign for the boots on loan until after the completion of the funeral. Later on, I learnt that these boots had be written off in the same manner as the sailors suits issued to senior rates, had been. The navy has many books of reference [BR's] covering every duty, function, piece of equipment, whatever, and the BR relevant to ceremonial drill was BR 1834. In May 1972, the 1949 edition was withdrawn and replaced by an updated book. At the time of the funeral, two changes had been incorporated, the last, change 2 being issued by directive P1428/78. For some reason best known to the Director of Naval Manpower and Training, chapter 7 'funerals' still reflected the pre introduction of the Fleet Chief Petty Officer in 1970 [later, post 1983, known as Warrant Officers] even though other chapters mentioned them. It seems petty now, but such an omission caused all kinds of misunderstandings from footwear to armbands when, as written, a CPO had boots and no mourning armband whereas his replacement, the FCPO had shoes and an armband.

Shortly before tea break on that Thursday afternoon, I met Lieutenant Bob Doyle Royal Navy for the first time. He was the Officer-in-Charge London Bearer Party, and as military tradition has it, he was to march at the head-end of the Coffin [i.e., following the Coffin] leaving me at the feet-end of the Coffin to give all the orders. He looked after us very well on the administration side and he fully committed himself to being a team member. At the time of the funeral he was the Training Officer at the RN Regulating School [the Navy's Police Academy] in HMS Excellent.

Gradually we started to put things together and we finished the day with a weighted Coffin much straining of arm muscles and tired feet.

I arrived home and with my wife watched television which showed the arrival at Eastleigh Airport of Lord Mountbatten's Coffin, and those of his family who perished with him. The Coffins were carried by the Royal Air Force, put into three Hearses and then taken to Broadlands, Lord Mountbatten's home at Romsey.

Friday the 31st August started off back at Whale Island [HMS Excellent] where we were given special permission to enter the large marquee which was being prepared to house the Royal Naval Engineering Exhibition. We went there because the whole area had been carpeted with large carpet tiles, and it was considered that this would give us a feel for a carpeted Westminster Abbey. In the event it was a waste of time because the carpet texture was nothing like a quality pile carpet. Also, as I have previously mentioned, the carpet in the Abbey was a non starter, but we did not know that until later in the day.

At 0930 we went back to Eastney where we continued to practice each separate part of our duty, and when happy we put the event together bit by bit. Tim and I were growing ever more confident that with his guidance I could stay close enough to the Coffin to look as though I belonged to the Bearer Party. Using the trestles which had come with the Coffin, we picked the Coffin up and placed it down again and again lifting approximately a quarter of a ton each time. Our Instructor was Chief Petty Officer Biff Elliott who had joined the Navy with my recruitment at HMS Ganges on the 13th October 1953. He was a character with a coarse but amusing verbal patter and a man who combined humour with diligence. He applied steady pressure on our training and monitored our progress.

At 1100 after our tea break, a Hearse from the firm of Royal undertakers, Kenyon's, arrived so that we could practice taking the Coffin out of the Hearse ready for the following Tuesday evening. The driver told us that this was the actual Hearse which would be used and that he would be the driver on the day. We made a flippant comment that Lord Louis deserved a V for Victor registered vehicle and not a S for Sierra registration. The driver answered by reminding us that Royal deaths were thankfully so infrequent that it was not cost effective to have a new vehicle each time. After twenty minutes and three lifts, we were happy with what we had to do and the Hearse left the Drill Shed. Before we stopped for lunch, Bob Doyle arrived to tell us of the ever changing plan. Originally, we the Bearers, were to do our Coffin movements at the respective points of departure, and then travel to the next arrival point by a Police escorted car. Now we were to stay with the Gun Carriage throughout and march through the streets of London. We were absolutely delighted of course, but true to form in the early days, nobody would say exactly where in the Procession we would be.

After lunch we temporarily gave up our isolated training in the Drill Shed and joined the Gun Carriages Crew on the Parade Ground. In that one and half days of training the Guns Crew had already grown into a team albeit lacking polish, but nevertheless the sense of belonging had been cemented. We were new boys, strangers in their camp and an additional burden they could well do without. We were ushered to fall-in at the rear of the Spare Numbers who were fell-in behind the Gun Carriages Rear Drag Rope Numbers. I was at the front, Bob at the rear and the Bearers in file. The Procession was formed up with the Marching Escort in front, the Massed Bands of the Royal Marines, the Gun Carriage and Crew, Spares and us, followed by the forty-odd Wrens who had just left training in HMS Dauntless, and bringing up the rear [though they would not march on the day] the Abbey Liners. The Wrens trained for the first couple of days only in Eastney, then disappeared to Guildford for joint training with the WRAC and WRAF contingents. We marched around the Eastney Barracks perimeter road and used the two gates each side of the main accommodation/Drill Shed block to simulate the Arches of Horse Guards Parade in London. Those first few perimeter marches were not good and we continuously had to change step because the Front Drag Rope Number's of the Guns Crew lost step with the Band. I am not sure why but the Band kept changing the beat, and discussions took place between the RM Bandmaster and the RN Ceremonial Staff. At last we went round looking like a military body of men and it was plain from the Instructors faces that they were happy and more relaxed. A decision was made that at 1900 that evening we would all march on Southsea front from Eastney to Southsea Pier and back, to get some idea of what we would have to do in London. The march was an utter shambles with the Band altering its beat and the leading Group regularly initiating a change of step sequence. The promenade was packed and many people witnessed our less than professional first public rehearsal which, after a short stop at the pier, was completed in darkness.

I left for home as soon as the Procession was dismissed happy with the progress we had made as the Coffin Bearer Party, but not happy with our involvement in the Gun Carriage Group.

After the funeral I received so many letters praising the Bearers for their dignity and bearing. Many were passed on to me by my Commanding Officer, Captain S D S Bailey Royal Navy, and some were addressed in such a way that I wonder how they ever found me ......."English sailors in London" for example. Many were addressed to me personally. I have far too many to publish, and anyway, were I to do that the originators would not be best pleased at seeing their address published across the WWW. However, as an example I am publishing just two, plus an article about our visit to Broadlands at Lord Romsey's invitation, as well as a short piece taken from the Mercury Messenger No 6 dated April 1980 {the Messenger was the Padres monthly newspaper on St Gabriel's, HMS Mercury's Nissan-hut Church. The Padre at the time was the Rev Tony Upton.

In the article about Lord Romsey, who incidentally will become The Earl Mountbatten of Burma at the death of his mother Patricia, The Countess Mountbatten of Burma, the newspaper reporter wrongly mentions Pall Bearers. It is a common mistake made by many, and to set the record straight I thought it useful if I were to define the difference between Pall and Coffin Bearers. The Coffin Bearer is self evident and needs no further explanation, except to say that in military Ceremonial there are eight of them instead of the usual six used for domestic funerals. I have researched the reason for this but the outcome is vague leaving just two plausible answers. The first is pure and simple emotion: the need to touch and be involved in the last journey of a leader, a hero, a loved one, a martyr, and we see this sad event time after time on our television screens particularly from the Middle East where the dignity of death is lost in a mad scramble to be near the Coffin. When the Ayatollah Khomeini was buried in Iran his Coffin was nearly torn to shreds by the emotional crowd of men. The second plausible explanation is that Ceremonial Coffins were made of solid wood, usually oak and often lined with lead, destined to lay in a vault or mausoleum rather than to be buried or cremated. Today's Coffins are rightly made from chipboard or even cardboard and are therefore less heavy.

Here I have added the Oxford English Dictionary [OED] definition of pall, and you will see that it is number 4 of a long list of definitions: -

4. A cloth, usually of black, purple, or white velvet, spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb.
_1440 Prompt. Parv. 378/1 Palle, or pelle, or other clothe leyd on a dede body,_capulare.
1463 Burial Ord. in Antiq. Rep. (1807) I. 315 The first herse coueryd with whit within the pale & parclose.
_1515 Cocke Lorell's B. 8 A ryche pal to ly on ye corse late fro rome is come.
1538 Croscombe Church-w. Acc. (Som. Rec. Soc.) 43 Received of Edyth Honythorne for a knylle and the pall vj.d.
_1674 Clarendon Hist. Reb. xi. _245 When the Coffin was put in, the black Velvet Pall that had covered it was thrown over it.
1712 Addison Spect. No. 517 _2 The coffin was carried by six of his tenants, and the pall held up by six of the quorum.
1852 Tennyson Ode Wellington 6 Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall.

Note particularly the entry for 1712 where it suggests that the Coffin Bearers were subordinate to the Pall Bearers. The quorum most of us are familiar with relates to a given number of people, but as the next definition from the OED shows, a quorum means something very different:-

|| quorum (________).
[L., lit. _of whom', from the wording of commissions in which certain persons were specially designated as members of a body by the words quorum vos...unum (duos, etc.) esse volumus _of whom we will that you...be one (two, etc.)'.]
1. Orig., certain justices of the peace, usually of eminent learning or ability, whose presence was necessary to constitute a bench; latterly the term was loosely applied to all justices.
1455 Rolls Parlt. V. 334/1 The Justicez or Justice of the Pease of the Quorum yn the same Shire.
1495 Act 11 Hen. VII. c. 2 _5, ij of the Justices of the peas wherof one shalbe of the Quorum.
1559 Mirr. Mag., R. Tresilian vii, At sessions & at syses_In patentes & commissions of Quorum.
1581 Lambarde Eiren. i. ix. (1602) 46 So that the one of those two [Justices] be of that select number, which is commonly tearmed of the Quorum. For these of the Quorum were wont_to bee chosen, specially for their knowledge in the Lawes of the lande.
1625 Massinger New Way i. i, Old Sir John Wellborn, Justice of Peace and Quorum.
1691 Wood Ath. Oxon. II. 274 George Wither_a Justice of Peace in Quorum for Hampshire.
1728 Vanbr. & Cib. Prov. Husb. ii. i. 43 I'm o' th' Quorum---I have been at Sessions.
1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. xxii. IV. 705 A squire who was one of the quorum.
Comb.
1619 Hutton Foll. Anat., Ixions Wheele E iij b, The Gods_Quorum Iustice warrants sent by poast.
b. transf. Applied to similarly distinguished members of other bodies; hence, a select company.
1602 Warner Alb. Eng. ix. xlvi. (1612) 216 The Hellish Potentates_a new Commission framed, Narcissus ghost and Ecchos voice therein of Quorum named.
_1661 Fuller Worthies (1840) III. 187 He was afterwards of that quorum in the translating of the Bible.
1678 Marvell Growth Popery Wks. 1875 IV. 329 [They are] so small a scantling in number, that men can scarce reckon of them more than a quorum.
1747 Scheme Equip. Men of War 24 A Quorum of Surgeons_should be ordered to_examine them.
1859 Green Oxf. Stud. ii. _10 (O.H.S.) 128 The deepest sot among the topers of the quorum.
Comb.
1659 A. Brome Panegyr. Verses in R. Brome's Wks. II, These would-be Quorum-Wits, and by their own Commission, do invade Apollo's throne.

A pall therefore, is a piece of cloth or material held high above a Coffin by using a number of poles [six in this case- one on each corner and one either side] held by six eminent people who were known as Pall Bearers. They of course walked on the outside of the Coffin Bearers. This was common practice at Royal funerals and was used right up to the mid 19th century. In Olivia Bland's book, The Royal Way of Death, there is a rather strange picture of the Coffin of Prince Albert, The Prince Consort entering St George's Chapel at Windsor. The picture shows that the Coffin Bearers are underneath a stiffened Pall which is resting on top of the Coffin, the sides of the Pall protruding outwards for some distance at a 45 degrees angle. There are no Pall Bearers!

At Lord Mountbatten's funeral, the Pall Bearer's were:-

Rear Admiral Chit Hlaing
General de Boissieu
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir William Dickson
Lieutenant General John Richards
Admiral R L Pereira
Admiral Hayward
General Sir Robert Ford
Admiral of The Fleet Sir Edward Ashmore.

On Saturday I left home early at 0650 and arrived at Eastney at 0730. The weather continued to be warm and sunny which made the early week-end start easier to bear. We continued with Coffin movement training until 0900, again marching up and down the Drill Shed. Shortly after 0900 the Bearer Party went by private cars to Portsmouth Town Railway Station, where a goods entrance gate was opened to allow us to park in the railway yard. To the left of our parking area was an old platform with an old goods wagon alongside, its double doors open, and to which was attached a wooden ramp. The Romsey Group, who were just completing their training using the railway carriage, left for Eastney leaving their practice Coffin for us to use. Based on their experience, we practiced a routine whereby when the leading two Bearers came to the bottom of the ramp, I halted the Bearers and turned them inwards, lowered the coffin to chest height and then side stepped up the ramp, me following on into the carriage. Once onboard the carriage, we turned right and put the Coffin onto trestles. We repeated this manoeuvre several times under the watchful eye of Fleet Chief Petty Officer Henry Cooper who was to travel with the Coffin from Waterloo to Romsey Station on the day of the funeral. His job on the day would be to take all the Ceremonial trappings off the top of the Coffin and replace them with a single family wreath, because as soon as the train left Waterloo it became a private funeral. We had mastered yet another routine with its corresponding new set of orders, and the pressure was beginning to build up. After approximately forty-five minutes in the Station we left and went back to Eastney just in time for NAAFI tea. During the tea break, Bob Doyle, Biff Elliott and I discussed the forthcoming Procession rehearsal which was to take place one hour before lunch, and which would involve us integrating into our new position in the Ceremony.

At 1030 we took our places actually alongside the Gun Carriage, each column of Bearers with Bob and I in the rear, placed either side of the great wheels, each standing approximately five foot ten inches tall. Each column of Bearers consisted of six persons which were the four Bearers, the officer or warrant officer, and a Cap Bearer. We were to maintain this position throughout the remaining training period and on the day of the funeral. The march route was now familiar although we felt a little anxious and self conscious in our new position, but after the Friday evening Southsea affair, we could surely only get better regardless of our position. The order came to step off at the slow march and the motionless three ton Gun and Limber started to move forward, their solid rubber tyres digging in and assisting traction. From my position on the outside of the Gun Carriage I had a good view of a large section of the Forward Drag Rope Numbers and they were a truly creditable sight, all in step, carrying themselves with good military bearing, and each man doing his very best to make this march a success. I could not see the Rear Drag Rope Numbers, but their leader, Commander Tricky Royal Navy, was silent and therefore I assumed well pleased with his men.

The whole march was a qualified success and the many shirt-sleeved civilians present on that warm Saturday morning, must have realised, as we did, that we were nearing our goal. We were well on the way to quote Captain Bethell Royal Navy, to nothing short of excellence unquote. The London route was timed to take thirty eight minutes and the Eastney route was made to last for approximately thirty three minutes.

When we dispersed for lunch, there was an air of confidence amongst the men, and I believe that it was at that point that those who had been compulsory recalled from leave and who were therefore not exactly pleased to find themselves undergoing parade training on a Saturday afternoon, suddenly decided that there was no way they would miss the oncoming London rehearsals and the funeral itself. It had taken nearly five days to achieve this level of morale and we had three days left in which to exploit the men's willingness to do their very best.

During the lunch period the television cameras arrived in the Drill Shed and were being set up ready for recording a programme for the national network called Nationwide. Also during the lunch hour, Biff had been talking to his fellow Ceremonial Instructors about off-caps for the Bearer Party; a routine practiced on earlier days by the Gun Carriages Crew. It was something new to learn and not at all easy. Men dressed as sailors had to master a detailed movement which was to involve putting the cap on and taking it off with the chin-stay down, using just the fingers and thumb of the right hand. We, Bob and I, had also to learn, indeed devise our own routine for removing and putting our caps on, again with just one hand. Every sailor learns to carry out certain orders by numbers, counting to themselves during the execution. In the Royal Navy, - up, two, three, down - is as well known as Nelson's name. Now there was a more involved method which had to be mastered. There was no period allowed in which to tuck away an odd piece of hair which had become trapped between the cap and the ear [for example], and if one failed to return the cap to the head so that it sat properly, the discomfort plus the odd appearance of such ill fitting headgear had to be accepted. Because of the potential difficulties of the chin-stay, a rating dressed as a seaman stood more of a chance of such a thing happening than did a person wearing a peaked cap where the chin-strap was not used.