The poignancy of King George VI's last summer camp for boys

In August 1939, the King and two hundred campers gathered for the last time only weeks before the outbreak of war

Everyone knew that war was coming, and at the end of the last summer of peace, King George VI wanted to make his annual week-long camp for boys a special experience, so he arranged to bring them to his Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands. His camp had begun eighteen years earlier as a democratic experiment on the English Channel coast in Kent. To promote better understanding between social classes in England’s highly stratified society, the King brought together four hundred boys, half from factories and mines, and half from elite boarding schools. Each summer the King—known to the campers as the “Great Chief”— spent a day with the boys. He dressed in the “camp kit” of shorts and an open-necked shirt, played games, and ate with them in their dining hall. He threw himself “heart and soul into everything,” according to camp leader John Cornwell.

During a visit to the King’s Camp on Monday, August 7, 1939, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret joined the boys in singing their traditional camp song, “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree,” complete with hand signals and silences

I described what were known as the Duke of York’s Camps in George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy, and last April 1st, three days before the book’s publication, I included them in one of my first Royals Extra Substack posts, titled “The People’s King.”  But the memory of the final camp still lingers, not only for the egalitarian spirit the King inspired, but the poignant knowledge that these carefree lads would soon be fighting for Britain against Nazi Germany.  I’d like to share more of their Highlands experience with my Royals Extra readers.

The boys at the King’s Camp on the grounds of Abergeldie Castle in Scotland

The King wanted to be with his campers for more than just one day, so he arranged for them to stay on the grounds of Abergeldie Castle, which was three miles from his holiday home at Balmoral Castle. Abergeldie held special meaning for the King, who spent happy summers there during his childhood. He invited two hundred boys aged seventeen to nineteen, half the usual number, but still evenly split between upper-class and industrial backgrounds, and he shifted the emphasis from games to exploring the natural world he knew so well.

Weird noises of the bagpipe

He renamed the gathering the King’s Camp, and he meticulously planned each day’s activities, including maps for hikes that he sketched out in red ink. The boys arrived by train on the evening of Saturday August 5^th to find the King waiting to greet them and help settle them into their sleeping quarters in the estate’s stable. On Sunday they were awakened by what a boy from Bryanston School called “weird noises of the bagpipe.”

They hiked over to Balmoral Castle and saw the Queen for the first time. After the royal couple shook every boy’s hand, they all had tea and a tour of the castle grounds. Monday the 7^th was a big day, with the morning arrival of George VI, smartly attired in a kilt of Balmoral tartan, and a tweed coat over a blue open-necked shirt. Accompanying him were Queen Elizabeth and the princesses. After several days of uncertain weather, the sun shone brightly.  According to The Times, when the royal family hove into view, they were “greeted with the mightiest cheers that have ever echoed back from the heather and fir covered hills surrounding Abergeldie.”

Queen Elizabeth and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret arriving at the King’s Camp on August 7, 1939

The cheering continued as the King and Queen and their daughters, “all smiling happily, walked through the avenue of tall firs and then through the narrow lane formed by the boys themselves into the camp.”