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Four Dukes. On Friday morning, as plain Britons jammed the curb and watched from rented windows along the way, the dignitaries lined up in another Great Queue, to escort the dead monarch to Paddington Station. Soldiers from the far reaches of his Commonwealth led the procession, followed by the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders from Scotland, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the Irish Guards, and detachments of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Britain's greatest soldiers walked with their men: Air Marshals Portal and Tedder, Field Marshals Alanbrooke, Ironside and Montgomery.
No animal has been trusted to draw a hearse in a royal funeral since a horse became fractious at Queen Victoria's funeral. Solemn lines of Navy ratings (enlisted men) in uniform blue hauled the gun carriage that bore the King's coffin. Behind them, in the bright red and gilt state coach, rode the bereaved women, dim, veiled, scarcely visible: Britain's young Queen, her mother, her sister Margaret and her aunt, the Princess Royal. Behind them, walking four abreast, came the Royal Dukes: Edinburgh, the Queen's husband; Gloucester, the King's younger brother; Windsor, who had once been King himself; and Kent, his 16-year-old nephew.
The slow procession passed Marlborough House, where all the blinds were drawn save one. In that window sat Queen Mary. When at last the gun carriage drew abreast, she stood, making a sudden, quick gesture of farewell to her dead son. The black-clad ladies in the coach bowed; the three elder Dukes saluted.
Ashes to Ashes. On wound the procession, the foreign dignitaries in the rear making a poor show beside the disciplined march of the military. Drab in topcoat and tophat they walked, wearing the abstracted look which the important learn to adopt under the pressure of staring eyes—neither marching nor sauntering, in a kind of compromise stiff-legged strut, along the weary three-mile route. At Paddington they broke ranks at last, milling and chatting discreetly as the coffin was loaded on to the funeral train amid the skirling of pipes. As the train pulled out, a blind in one coach was raised and Britain's new Queen peered out. Her breath fogged the window and she brushed the mist away with an impatient gloved hand.
Her impatience was reflected in many of the watchers. At Windsor, as another procession formed to escort the King to his last resting place, an irritated bystander muttered: "Stand still, please. Stand in one place so people can see." The Archbishops of Canterbury and York were waiting in the castle's Chapel of St. George to perform the last rites. The Primate spoke the old words from the Book of Common Prayer: "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." From a silver bowl, Elizabeth II took a handful of earth and dropped it on the coffin as it slowly sank to the vault below.