GENERAL Lord Dannatt has paid tribute to the “very personal” relationship King Charles has enjoyed with our Armed Forces.
In an interview with GB News, he also reflected on the Queen’s death.
He told Weekend Breakfast: “The Armed forces, along with the rest of the country, very much having to come to terms with something as your last conversation suggested, we thought perhaps would never happen.
“Well, of course, logically, one knew one day that the Queen would die. But I think when we all woke up yesterday morning, having heard the news on Thursday, we had to sort of pinch ourselves and think, what is it? Is it really true? Well, that clearly and sadly, it is. But I think as you were just alluding to in the introduction, there is a very special relationship between members of the armed forces and the sovereign because we swear this oath of allegiance on the day that we joined.”
He added: “The Queen and other senior members of the royal family all enjoy honorary appointments. Every regiment and core of the British Army has a royal colonel in chief, as indeed two ships and naval bases in the Royal Navy, and Air stations and squadrons in the Royal Air Force. And again, that’s not just a paper saying the queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, all the members of the royal family actively visit and support the units for which they hold an honorary title. So that link is a very practical link. It’s a very personal link. And you genuinely feel that an interest has been taken.”
Paying tribute to King Charles’ relationship with troops, he added: “When we were having a large number of casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan, who were being treated at the old Sileo Hospital in Birmingham, the Prince of Wales then, King Charles now was the Colonel in Chief, would write a handwritten letter to all the soldiers that had been injured, and send them a bottle of whiskey. Now that was personal and that was real. And actually, it just made a tremendous difference to those soldiers to think gosh, my colonel in chief knows I’ve been injured. He’s written me a letter. My goodness, he sent me a bottle of whiskey. That is very special, you don’t get that I’m afraid with all due respect if you work for a large supermarket or a multinational company? No, you don’t.”
He added: “We can celebrate everything that Queen Elizabeth was we can look forward with hope and anticipation for the reign of King Charles III, and I think we all agree that his speech last night was magnificent, very harsh and very well thought through, confronted all the issues, and frankly, we can look forward with confidence to a new monarch leading us forward.”
