Prince Philip - homelessness and loss of family (until 1947).

Philip was born (1921) on Corfu, son of Prince Andrew of Greece & Denmark, and Princess Alice of Battenberg after 4 daugh­t­ers: Margarita (b1905), Theodora (b1906), Cecilie (b1911) and Soph­ie (b1914). Thus Philip was himself the Prince of Greece and Denmark.

Note that Philip’s maternal grandfather Prince Louis of Battenberg was a naturalised British citizen who took the surname Mountbatten in WWI.

I am following Tom Garner's journal paper, except where I think he was incorrect. Andrew was absent at Philip’s birth, away fighting in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-22). Andrew was a General comm­anding the Greek Second Army Corps, but refused to obey the or­ders of his superior officer in 1921. The Prince was arrested in the Sept 1922 Revol­ution, a revolt of the Greek armed forces again­st the government who they held responsible for the Turkish vict­ory. It led to King Cons­tantine’s abdication and to Andrew’s death sentence for treason.

Prince Philip, Princess Alice and Prince Andrew in the centre.
L->R Philip’s sisters, Margarita, Theodora, Sophie and Cecilie.

One of the last times they were altogether. Oct 1928.

Princess Alice turned to her British relatives to save her husband. King George V, haunted by not allowing cousin Tsar Nich­olas II of Russia and his family to seek asylum in Britain in WWI, urged a British evacuation. A Greek court banished Andrew from Greece for life and he left in Dec 1922. He was lucky: other senior government members were tried and executed. Soon afterwards a Royal Navy gunboat evacuated the family from Corfu. So from Dec 1922 until his marriage in 1948, young Philip had no permanent residence. 

The family tried to settle in Saint-Cloud near Paris where Andrew and Alice borrowed a house, living off family money. Until 1928 when Philip was sent to Britain to Cheam School where he appeared to have been an unsettled child who needed discip­line.

Deaf from childhood, Alice had been facing a nervous breakdown; this had been attributed to: 1. exile from Greece, 2. separ­at­ions from the child­ren, 3. traumatic menopause, 4. manic depress­ion, 5. religious cris­is or 6. my choice, a cruel husband. In any case, Philip’s mot­h­er was placed in a Swiss sanatorium in 1931. Meanwhile Phil­ip’s sisters married between 1930-31 and moved to settle in Germany. Andrew, who had spent more time with a mistress, finally left alt­og­ether and mo­v­ed to South France.

Philip was only 10, yet received no word from his parents bet­ween 1932-7. How can parents do that??? So the British part of Phil­ip’s family took the respons­ibility for his care. His maternal grandmother, Princess Victoria, sent him to live with Uncle George, Marquis of Milford, surrogate fat­her for 7 years. Philip became close fr­iends with the Marquis’ son David, who also attended Cheam School and gave Philip a sense of stability.

In 1933 Philip’s sister Theodora reappeared and introduced him to a major mentor: Kurt Hahn. Hahn had been the German chancellor’s per­s­onal secretary and had earlier founded a school at Schloss Salem in Baden-Württemberg. Theodora sent Philip there in 1933, just as Hitler came to power.

By 1934 Philip was sent back to Britain, to a new Scottish school established by the now-exiled Hahn: Gordonstoun, with its rad­ical teaching methods. Gordonstoun pupils were taught to counter the declines of initiative and self-discipline etc; they rose at 7am each day in shorts and ran barefoot to the cold water showers all year! Philip was sporty and competitive, and flourished.

In the five years that he attended Gordonstoun, neither George Mil­ford nor Philip’s other British guardian Lord Louis Mountbatten visited. Then in Nov 1937 Philip's pregnant sister Cec­il­ie was killed in plane crash in Belg­ium, along with her husband and children. The lonely teenager travelled alone to attend the funerals in Germany.

At the funerals in Darmstadt, Philip was photographed as part of a procession packed with uniformed Nazis, including Herman Goer­ing. But Philip was never a Nazi sympathiser.

Then Philip went home but sadly his uncle/guardian, Marq­uess of Milford Haven, died of cancer at 46. Under the ad­vice of Lord Mountbatten, Philip enrolled at the Britannia Royal Naval Col­l­­ege, Dartmouth in 1938. In July 1939, Philip had to conduct young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret when they vis­it­ed the Navy Col­l­ege. They’d already met at George VI’s coronation two years earlier, but in 1939 Elizab­eth really fell for Philip.

Philip and Elizabeth on their honeymoon, 1947

Broadlands House

Britain did not want the Greek prince to be killed in an active warzone on a Royal Navy ship, so Philip’s war began when he was posted to distant Ceylon (Jan 1940). However this changed when It­aly invaded Greece and Philip became a midshipman on HMS Valiant, at a battle off the Greek coast in March 1941. It was Italy’s worst naval defeat and Philip was awarded the Greek Cross of Valour.

At 21, Philip was promoted to First Naval Lieutenant and in July 1943 he was again in action, aboard HMS Wallace invad­ing Sicily. Philip ended his war aboard a ship that took part in the formal surrender of Japanese forces in Sept 1945.

Post-war he expected to remain in his naval car­eer. But he’d kept in touch with Elizabeth and in 1946 he propos­ed marr­iage. In the wake of the 1936 Abdication Cris­is, Elizabeth’s father King George VI objected to the match - Philip was neith­er Brit­ish nor Church of Engl­and. So George asked Philip to postpone an official engage­ment until Elizabeth turned 21 in 1947. When the couple’s engage­ment was ann­oun­ced, Philip quickly became a British subject: he renoun­ced all foreign titles, convert­ed to Anglic­anism and took the name Mountbatten.

Prince Andrew, who had not seen his son for years as Monaco was under occupation, died penniless in 1944. And Princess Alice had been work­ing for the Red Cross in occupied Ath­ens. Mean­while his surviving sisters were all in Germany and they were prev­ented from attending his wedding, because of their Nazi husbands. Only Alice participated.

In Nov 1947 Philip married Eliz­a­beth in Westminster Abbey. Prince Philip now had a role, permanent home and love, saying he’d triumphed over his early traumas. And he’s rep­res­ented the British monarchy for 60+ years, the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch. But no one survives a miserable youth unscarred.