Kate Middleton could not join King Charles and Queen Camilla to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day at yesterdayâs Portsmouth ceremony, but that didnât stop veterans asking after the Princess of Walesâs well-being.
Geoffrey Weaving, 100, who took part in historyâs largest seaborne invasion on this day in 1944, spoke to Prince William after Wednesdayâs moving tribute. As the Prince of Wales knelt down to chat with the veteran, he gave an insight into the Kates Middletonâs health as she continues her cancer treatment.
âShe is getting better, yes,â said the Prince. âShe would have loved to be here today.â
The Princess of Wales has a strong family connection to Britainâs war effort, one that Prince William celebrated as he shook hands and shared stories with the D-Day heroes.
âI was reminding everyone how her grandmother served at Bletchley,â he told Weaving, âso she had quite a bit in common with some of the ladies here who were at Bletchley.â
The p[rince continued, discussing the covert nature of the codebreakersâ work, which was crucial to the Allied powersâ defeat of Nazi forces. âThey never spoke about anything until the very endâit was all very secret.â
The Prince of Wales was clearly keeping both Kate Middleton and her Bletchley Circle grandmother in his thoughts throughout the event, discussing the Walesesâ codebreaking connection with a woman thought to have worked at Bletchley herself:
âMy wifeâs grandmother did the same sort of thing as you,â he said. âCatherine only found out at the end of her life.â
It was only in 2014 that Kate, then Duchess of Cambridge, learned that her paternal grandmother, Valerie Glassborow, had played a monumental role during the Second World War. Glassborow was breaking German codes in Hut 16 at Bletchley Park when news came through that Japan had surrendered. It was, of course, an intercepted messageâmaking the Princess of Walesâs grandmother one of the first people in the world to know that the war was over.