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to console the princess. Princess Beatrice refused Lord Kitchener’s offer to repatriate the body, saying: ‘Let him lie with his men!’ and so the prince was buried in Ypres cemetery. His mother threw herself into hospital work and had much empathy with mothers who had lost their sons in the war. She wrote: ‘Nothing could touch and help me to bear this great trial, than to know that others feel for me. To lose a beloved, promising young man is a terrible trial, but I can look back with pride on him, on his work nobly fulfilled, and life willingly given for his King and Country’.
On 5th November, a memorial service was held which was attended by his mother, the king and queen, together with the prime minister and Lord Kitchener. Poignantly, another mourner was the elderly Empress Eugénie, whose only child, Louis-Napoléon, Prince Imperial of France, was killed in action during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and is commemorated with a statue on New College Square at Sandhurst.
Prince Maurice of Battenberg remains the only member of the British royal family to be killed in action.
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