Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 267
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[Page 267]
131 A
While at the Alexandra Hotel, I received a telegram from the Lord Chamberlin, reading, "Your attendance is requested Buckingham Palace on Wednesday the twenty third inst at 11.30. Service dress. Please telegraph acknowledgement". This was a command to attend an investiture at the Palace. I duly betook myself there at the appointed time and was ushered by a tip-nose footman into the big gilt and white throne room, which was rapidly filling up with officers of all ranks, units and Dominions. After a check that all concerned were present, a Major of the Palace Staff instructed us in the correct manner of approaching and withdrawing from the Royal Presence; in this case that of King George V. We were warned that if we should have cause to reply to a Royal question we should address the King as "Your Majesty" the first time, but only as "Sir" thereafter.
Recipients, one at a time and bareheaded, entered a small annex where the King, a small man, stood, in the khaki field service dress of a Field Marshal, on a low footstool flanked by half a dozen of his personal staff.
The drill was to enter a few paces, turn left, halt and bow from the waist to the King standing in front of you; then to take three more paces forward that brought one within his reach.
One of his Aides read out your rank and name, and unit, and a brief recitation of the citation, following which the King picked up the appropriate decoration from a cushion held by another Aide, hung it on the officer's breast, shook hands and murmured a few words. "I am pleased to give you the Military Cross", he said to me as our hands met. Then one took three full steps backward, turned smartly about and marched out into an adjoining ante-room where a flunkey provided a case for the decoration and then conducted one through a couple of long corridors, the walls of which were covered with magnificent big oil paintings, and so outside into the Palace grounds.
The thing I remembered most about King George V was his very deep, quiet and completely unaffected voice.