Our Queen at War

Queen Elizabeth II is Britain'slongest-reigning monarch.

75 years ago,

she stood on this same balcony at Buckingham Palace,

celebrating the end of the Second World War.

This shy princess had been transformed

by the demands of six years of war...

a war that had seen her own home bombed

and her parents nearly killed,

a war that saw this quiet child find the courage

to broadcast to evacuees in the United States and Canada...

-Remember, it will be for us, the children of today,

to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.

-We thought they were in the wireless.

I remember my sister and I sort of looking behind the wireless,

wondering where they were.

-...a war that saw her famous sense of duty

emerging with new ceremonial roles...

appear in pantomimes for the war effort...

and support royal charities.

-It gives me great pleasure to come here today

to open the Aberdeen Sailors Home.

...and saw her threatened

by one of the war's most terrifying weapons.

-The girls threw themselves on the ground.

The thought the worst was going to happen.

Princess Elizabeth was really starting

to show signs of strain.

-Eager to throw herself into the war effort,

the national crisis turned this young woman

into the leader her country needed.

War made her.

It made her closer to people,

and it made us closer to her because she's one of us.

-The Second World War transformed a shy princess

into a legendary queen.

-Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor

was born April 21, 1926.

As the daughter of the Duke of York,

who was second in line to the throne,

nobody expected Elizabeth to become queen.

Instead, she would lead a quiet life

away from the glare of publicity.

But everything changed when her uncle, Edward VIII,

renounced the throne in favor of Elizabeth's father,

who became King George VI.

10-year-old Elizabeth was now next in line to the throne.

-Back in 1936, 10-year-olds were still children,

and she was still a child,

because, as she told her sister, Margaret,

"Uncle David's going away,

and Papa is to be king."

And Margaret's response to that was,

"Does that mean you're going to be queen?"

And she said, "Yes, one day."

-But Elizabeth's father, the Duke of York,

was reluctant to take his elder brother's place.

-He was a man who doubted himself.

Could he be king?

He'd never been trained for this.

The peaceful home life

Elizabeth and her family had enjoyed up until now

was shattered forever.

She was too young

for her parents to conceal their own distress.

She'd have lived through it at the dining table,

lunch table, with them.

When she heard what was due to happen to her

as heir to the throne,

she started desperately praying for a baby brother,

who would have got, in those days --

have jumped ahead of her in succession.

A nice little baby boy

would have taken the load off her shoulders beautifully.

-On May 12, 1937, George VI was crowned king.

Elizabeth later wrote a detailed account of the day.

She talks about Mummy and Daddybeing consumed

in a haze of wonder,

and that clearly expressed how she herself was moved deeply,

spiritually, by this -- this --this mission that now lay ahead.

-Princess Elizabeth came to terms with the fact

she would one day follow her father and mother

into that haze of wonder.

Her parents were determined

she and her sister enjoy their childhood.

But suddenly everything changed.

-The Royal Family were on their Scottish holiday,

as usual,

at the beginning of September 1939 when war broke out.

And the king and the queen went straight down to London

to see the prime minister.

The girls stayed up in Scotland.

-For the second time in the lives of most of us,

we are...

at war.

There may be dark days ahead,

and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield.

The towns and cities of Britainwere expected

to bear the brunt of death and destruction.

Within the first three days of the war,

1 1/2 million children, pregnant women,

and the infirm were evacuated to the countryside.

While the princesses were getting used

to being separated from their parents,

other children were preparing to leave theirs.

-Many of the children thought they were going on holiday.

One or two children had a bucket and spade.

They took that away from them, but we had to just carry

one change of clothes, and that's all.

-Aware of the suffering evacuation was causing,

Elizabeth's mother shared her own feelings about it.

-Many of you have had to see your family life broken up,

your children evacuated to places of greater safety.

The king and I know

what it means to be parted from our children,

and we can sympathize with those of you

who have bravely consented to this separation

for the sake of your little ones.

-Looked after by their governess, Marion Crawford,

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret

were moved from Balmoral Castle

to the less obvious target of Birkhall nearby.

They were about to experience

what life as an evacuee was likefor ordinary children.

Quite soon, evacuees were beingtaken out of Glasgow

and being set up in houses on the Balmoral Estate

that the king had opened up.

In the first weeks of the war,

hundreds of Glaswegian evacuees descended on rural Scotland.

As World War II progressed, it would draw people together

from very different backgrounds.

This didn't come naturally to the princess.

-Elizabeth was never quite at ease with some of the children

because I think they were

very, very different from the princesses,

and she was a little bit awkward with them.

-Elizabeth and Margaret each decided

to donate one of their coats to the evacuees.

This simple gesture made the headlines.

Glasgow evacuees Isa Kelly and Betty Murphy

were the lucky recipients of the coats.

I remember Betty Murphy

just because of the coat, I suppose.

-A year younger than Princess Elizabeth,

local resident Zan Grant got to know some of the evacuees.

They were from the poorest partof Glasgow,

I would think, near the Clyde.

Yes, and, of course, their picture was in the paper.

Couldn't believe it, you know?

It was really something special at the time.

-While the princess was getting to know her future subjects,

the predicted bombing didn't happen.

By early 1940, many evacuees had returned to the cities.

Princess Elizabeth and her sister

also secretly returned to England

to be closer to their parents.

They caught up on the first major event of the war

by watching newsreels in a private screening room.

-The evacuation of the BEF from Flanders

has been virtually completed.

Once again, Hitler had underrated

the power of the Royal Navy.

-The German invasion's progress through Western Europe

led to the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied Forces.

In just six weeks,

Hitler captured Paris on June 14th.

The German army was now at the English Channel.

Holkham Hall, near Sandringham in Norfolk,

lived under the threat of Nazi invasion by sea.

It was the family home of Ladies Anne and Carey Coke,

friends of Princess Elizabeth and her sister, Margaret.

When we were very young,

when the princesses were very young,

I was young, we used to go on the beach,

you know, which was lovely, andswim and dig, make sand castles.

Princess Elizabeth then was more serious

and did say, "Margaret, what are you doing?"

or "Anne, you shouldn't do that."

I mean, we definitely thought Hitler was going to land.

So my sister and I had this wonderful plan

that we were actually gonna kill Hitler,

and we had what we called Hitler's mess,

which was a jam jar that we kept under our bed.

Anything really disgusting we'd put in there.

And we had it all planned.

We used to practice with our Teddy bear being Hitler.

And we'd say, "Ooh, Mr. Hitler, how lovely to see you.

We've got a delicious drink that we've got for you."

We never thought beyond actually killing him.

I mean, we just thought we would succeed.

Luckily, we didn't have to put it into practice.

-With their famous houses and palaces,