NYT reports that Queen Elizabeth will visit Ground Zero on Tuesday and visit a garden created to pay respect to the 67 Britons killed in the attacks.
I am recently fascinated by Queen Elizabeth. From her youth, she has been an unusually sensible monarch. She actually had no expectation that she’d one day be Queen. Her father was young, and so was her uncle, Prince Edward of Wales who was to succeed her father. In 1936, her uncle abdicated to marry “the woman I love”, Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American, and she became second in line to the throne. When her father passed away while she was in Nairobi, the twenty-eight year old Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth.
My favorite fact about her comes from Wikipedia:
In 1943, 16-year-old Elizabeth undertook her first solo public appearance on a visit to the Grenadier Guards, of which she had been appointed Colonel-in-Chief the previous year. In February 1945, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, as an honorary Second Subaltern with the service number of 230873. She trained as a driver and mechanic, drove a military truck, and was promoted to honorary Junior Commander five months later. She is the last surviving head of state who served in uniform during the Second World War.
Anyone who knows me knows I am not a fan of feminism, but wow, she is one tough old broad.
Second favorite fact: Married sixty-four years, hers has been the longest marriage of any British monarch.
I guess I’m just a fan in general. I wish I were in New York so I could, perhaps, catch a glimpse.
British women did a great deal in support of the WWII war effort. It’s not very well known, but women served as members of antiaircraft batteries…the Geneva Convention rule against women serving in lethal capacities was finessed, as they handled the sighting, rangefinding, and computing equipment, while the men of the battery loaded and fired the guns.
I learned about the “AA girls” while reading about Violette Szabo, who served in this capacity before joining Special Operations Executive as a secret agent.
Fascinating. It pleases me that Elizabeth was doing those things and wasn’t just a trifling girl.
One amusing sidenote on the AA girls: the detachments for the big ground-to-air searchlights were made up of all women….except for one man in each unit, whose job it was to start the big diesel generator by hand. The general in charge of AA command wisely insisted that the gender composition of these units be kept quite secret, lest he be endlessly plagued by journalists and members of Parliament fantasizing about the lone man’s enjoyment of his “harem.”
Perhaps our monarch can give her an updated iPod.