UK Edition
The Prince of Wales has said the Princess would have loved to join him for the “very moving” D-Day anniversary event in Portsmouth on Wednesday as he said she was “getting better”.
The Prince, the King and the Queen chatted to D-Day veterans after the ceremony, shaking their hands and thanking them for their service.
He was asked by Geoffrey Weaving, aged 100, how the Princess of Wales was faring with her cancer treatment and replied: “Yes, she is getting better, yes. She would have loved to be here today.
“I was reminding everyone how her grandmother served at Bletchley, so she had quite a bit in common with some of the ladies here who were at Bletchley. They never spoke about anything until the very end – it was all very secret.”
The Prince, who bent down to speak to Mr Weaving in his wheelchair, added: “Geoffrey, it was lovely to see you. We’ll see you in five years time for the 85th”.
Mr Weaving, who served with the Navy, has previously recalled arriving on the French coast on June 6 1944, and finding the sea “full of dead bodies” as warships started firing upon Allied troops who ran for their lives onto the sand.
Earlier, the Prince had talked to a woman thought to have worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park and said: “My wife’s grandmother did the same sort of thing as you. Catherine only found out at the end of her life.”
Valerie Glassborow, the Princess’s paternal grandmother, worked as a codebreaker in Hut 16 at Bletchley Park alongside her twin sister, Mary.
Ms Glassborow was on duty when a message was intercepted saying that Japan had surrendered, making her one of only a handful of people – along with the King and the prime minister – to learn that the war was over.
She died in 2006, aged 82, having kept the secrets of her wartime work close to her chest.
In 2019, the Princess, then the Duchess of Cambridge, spoke of her sadness that her grandmother felt unable to tell her about the important work she had done at Bletchley Park.
During a visit to the site in Milton Keynes, she revealed she had been “so sworn to secrecy that she never felt able to tell us” as she was shown a memorial containing the name of her father’s mother and her great-aunt.
Meeting four women who had worked as codebreakers, she told them they must be “so proud” of their “very important work”, and shared her hopes that a new generation would celebrate them.
She told a group of schoolchildren who were learning to use Enigma machines: “My granny and her sister worked here. It’s very cool. When she was alive sadly she could never talk about it. She was so sworn to secrecy that she never felt able to tell us.”