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-Queen Elizabeth II is Britain'slongest-reigning monarch.

75 years ago,

she stood on this same balcony at Buckingham Palace,

celebrating the end of the Second World War.

This shy princess had been transformed

by the demands of six years of war...

a war that had seen her own home bombed

and her parents nearly killed,

a war that saw this quiet child find the courage

to broadcast to evacuees in the United States and Canada...

-Remember, it will be for us, the children of today,

to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.

-We thought they were in the wireless.

I remember my sister and I sort of looking behind the wireless,

wondering where they were.

-...a war that saw her famous sense of duty

emerging with new ceremonial roles...

appear in pantomimes for the war effort...

and support royal charities.

-It gives me great pleasure to come here today

to open the Aberdeen Sailors Home.

-...and saw her threatened

by one of the war's most terrifying weapons.

-The girls threw themselves on the ground.

The thought the worst was going to happen.

Princess Elizabeth was really starting

to show signs of strain.

-Eager to throw herself into the war effort,

the national crisis turned this young woman

into the leader her country needed.

-War made her.

It made her closer to people,

and it made us closer to her because she's one of us.

-The Second World War transformed a shy princess

into a legendary queen.

-Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor

was born April 21, 1926.

As the daughter of the Duke of York,

who was second in line to the throne,

nobody expected Elizabeth to become queen.

Instead, she would lead a quiet life

away from the glare of publicity.

But everything changed when her uncle, Edward VIII,

renounced the throne in favor of Elizabeth's father,

who became King George VI.

10-year-old Elizabeth was now next in line to the throne.

-Back in 1936, 10-year-olds were still children,

and she was still a child,

because, as she told her sister, Margaret,

"Uncle David's going away,

and Papa is to be king."

And Margaret's response to that was,

"Does that mean you're going to be queen?"

And she said, "Yes, one day."

-But Elizabeth's father, the Duke of York,

was reluctant to take his elder brother's place.

-He was a man who doubted himself.

Could he be king?

He'd never been trained for this.

-The peaceful home life

Elizabeth and her family had enjoyed up until now

was shattered forever.

-She was too young

for her parents to conceal their own distress.

She'd have lived through it at the dining table,

lunch table, with them.

When she heard what was due to happen to her

as heir to the throne,

she started desperately praying for a baby brother,

who would have got, in those days --

have jumped ahead of her in succession.

A nice little baby boy

would have taken the load off her shoulders beautifully.

-On May 12, 1937, George VI was crowned king.

Elizabeth later wrote a detailed account of the day.

-She talks about Mummy and Daddybeing consumed

in a haze of wonder,

and that clearly expressed how she herself was moved deeply,

spiritually, by this -- this --this mission that now lay ahead.

-Princess Elizabeth came to terms with the fact

she would one day follow her father and mother

into that haze of wonder.

Her parents were determined

she and her sister enjoy their childhood.

But suddenly everything changed.

-The Royal Family were on their Scottish holiday,

as usual,

at the beginning of September 1939 when war broke out.

And the king and the queen went straight down to London

to see the prime minister.

The girls stayed up in Scotland.

-For the second time in the lives of most of us,

we are...

at war.

There may be dark days ahead,

and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield.

-The towns and cities of Britainwere expected

to bear the brunt of death and destruction.

Within the first three days of the war,

1 1/2 million children, pregnant women,

and the infirm were evacuated to the countryside.

While the princesses were getting used

to being separated from their parents,

other children were preparing to leave theirs.

-Many of the children thought they were going on holiday.

One or two children had a bucket and spade.

They took that away from them, but we had to just carry

one change of clothes, and that's all.

-Aware of the suffering evacuation was causing,

Elizabeth's mother shared her own feelings about it.

-Many of you have had to see your family life broken up,

your children evacuated to places of greater safety.

The king and I know

what it means to be parted from our children,

and we can sympathize with those of you

who have bravely consented to this separation

for the sake of your little ones.

-Looked after by their governess, Marion Crawford,

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret

were moved from Balmoral Castle

to the less obvious target of Birkhall nearby.

They were about to experience

what life as an evacuee was likefor ordinary children.

-Quite soon, evacuees were beingtaken out of Glasgow

and being set up in houses on the Balmoral Estate

that the king had opened up.

-In the first weeks of the war,

hundreds of Glaswegian evacuees descended on rural Scotland.

As World War II progressed, it would draw people together

from very different backgrounds.

This didn't come naturally to the princess.

-Elizabeth was never quite at ease with some of the children

because I think they were

very, very different from the princesses,

and she was a little bit awkward with them.

-Elizabeth and Margaret each decided

to donate one of their coats to the evacuees.

This simple gesture made the headlines.

Glasgow evacuees Isa Kelly and Betty Murphy

were the lucky recipients of the coats.

-I remember Betty Murphy

just because of the coat, I suppose.

-A year younger than Princess Elizabeth,

local resident Zan Grant got to know some of the evacuees.

-They were from the poorest partof Glasgow,

I would think, near the Clyde.

Yes, and, of course, their picture was in the paper.

Couldn't believe it, you know?

It was really something special at the time.

-While the princess was getting to know her future subjects,

the predicted bombing didn't happen.

By early 1940, many evacuees had returned to the cities.

Princess Elizabeth and her sister

also secretly returned to England

to be closer to their parents.

They caught up on the first major event of the war

by watching newsreels in a private screening room.

-The evacuation of the BEF from Flanders

has been virtually completed.

Once again, Hitler had underrated

the power of the Royal Navy.

-The German invasion's progress through Western Europe

led to the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied Forces.

In just six weeks,

Hitler captured Paris on June 14th.

The German army was now at the English Channel.

Holkham Hall, near Sandringham in Norfolk,

lived under the threat of Nazi invasion by sea.

It was the family home of Ladies Anne and Carey Coke,

friends of Princess Elizabeth and her sister, Margaret.

-When we were very young,

when the princesses were very young,

I was young, we used to go on the beach,

you know, which was lovely, andswim and dig, make sand castles.

Princess Elizabeth then was more serious

and did say, "Margaret, what are you doing?"

or "Anne, you shouldn't do that."

I mean, we definitely thought Hitler was going to land.

So my sister and I had this wonderful plan

that we were actually gonna kill Hitler,

and we had what we called Hitler's mess,

which was a jam jar that we kept under our bed.

Anything really disgusting we'd put in there.

And we had it all planned.

We used to practice with our Teddy bear being Hitler.

And we'd say, "Ooh, Mr. Hitler, how lovely to see you.

We've got a delicious drink that we've got for you."

We never thought beyond actually killing him.

I mean, we just thought we would succeed.

Luckily, we didn't have to put it into practice.

-With their famous houses and palaces,

the Royal Family were vulnerabletargets for Nazi assassins.

Fear of invasion was growing.

The government repeatedly advised the Royal Family

to move their children abroad.

-They were not sent to Canada,

like a lot of girls of their age,

on the grounds that, as is well known,

the Queen Mother said, "They won't leave without me,

and I won't leave without theking, and the king won't leave."

And, you know, you can understand it,

that if the king and queen are still in London,

things aren't too bad.

-The precise location of the Royal Family

was a matter of great national secrecy and security.

-So, the newsreels told everybody at the time

the princesses were somewhere in the country.

Now of course we know it was Windsor Castle.

-They knew that they wereprobably fairly safe at Windsor,

but they did have a safe house, as well, further north,

and it was kept there the whole of the war.

So if there was an invasion,

and everybody thought that therewas going to be an invasion,

the princesses and the queen

could immediately be sent up north.

They would then take a boat from Liverpool

so that they could get out of the country

if they needed to be.

But, fortunately, that never happened.

-While she was safe in Windsor Castle,

Princess Elizabeth worried about her father and mother,

who remained in Buckingham Palace.

And in the Blitz to come,

they would become the prime target for Hitler's Luftwaffe.

In July 1939, two months before the outbreak of war,

13-year-old Princess Elizabethand the rest of the Royal Family

sailed to Dartmouth in Devon on the royal yacht.

This was a day

that would transform the life of the princess.

The Royal Family were here to pay a visit

to the Royal Naval College,

where Princess Elizabeth's father and grandfather trained

as naval cadets.

Michael Vaughan was a 13-year-old recruit.

He recalls the visit.

-We would keep a keen eye open in case any of the royal party

came anywhere near us, whereupon we would tremble.

It seemed to youngsters like us that he was a good chap

and that his wife was really pleasant

and there might be some prospectin the princesses.

-Dartmouth is where

the country's naval officers are trained.

One in particular stood out from the crowd.

-This tall 18-year-old blond chap appeared

that was Prince Philip of Greece.

-Prince Philip was asked

to entertain the king and queen's daughters.

-Philip suggested that they go and jump over the tennis nets

on the tennis courts.

-The princesses' governess, Marion Crawford,

kept a sharp eye on the girls.

-Princess Elizabeth said, "Oh, Crawfie,

look at how high he jumps," whenhe jumped over the tennis net.

-Once he'd proved his athletic skills,

Prince Philip suggested a game of croquet.

Shortly afterwards, a journalist captured

a photograph of them together, alone.

The following day, the royal party rejoined the royal yacht,

but their departure didn't go unnoticed.

-A lot of the cadets rowed afterwards

in a sort of show of thanks

to say goodbye to the royal party.

-Just as they were sort of pulling right away

and all the boats were going back to the harbor,

the king happened to notice one boy really rowing away.

-And the king was looking through his binoculars.

"Who's that bloody fool still rowing?

Go back."

And it was Philip, of course,

and I think the princess has never forgot that.

-If you were wondering whether romance was blossoming,

I would say that almost everybody believed

that that was happening.

-Elizabeth herself just 13 then,and at this very moment,

she meets the man, um,

with whom she fell in love that day.

-Rising up the ranks to first lieutenant,

Philip would patrol the perilouswaters of the Mediterranean

and the Indian Ocean.

Princess Elizabeth kept up aregular correspondence with him.

-Whatever it meant to her personally,

it gave her this same sense of identity

with so many British women during the war.

Their man -- husband, fiancé, boyfriend --

was away risking his life, which Philip did.

-For the next five years, the princess kept a photo

of a bearded Prince Philip on her mantelpiece.

"There you are, Crawfie," she said to her nanny.

"I defy anyone to recognize who that is."

A year into the Second World War,

life in Britain appeared to carry on as normal.

It became known as "the phony war."

But it came to an end on September 7, 1940.

The Blitz began with heavy raids on London.

Mass air attacks on numerous towns, cities,

and industrial targets followed over the next eight months.

Between September 1940 and May 1941,

more than 40,000 people died, almost half of them in London.

-Princess Elizabeth was aware of this, I mean,

'cause they were at Windsor.

But they could hear some of the bombing.

The king felt that she needed to know.

And she would see Pathé News, and she would see newspapers,

although she was protected from the real horrors of it.

-Things move with lightning swiftness in this Nazi war,

but at the moment of recording these pictures,

London is still enduring the nightly bombardment

by Hitler and his gangsters.

The casualties have been heavy,

both in human lives and materials.

-Newsreels helped Princess Elizabeth to get a sense

of what ordinary children were going through.

Ron Batchelor was a schoolboy living in central London

during the worst of the air raids.

-When a building was hit,

as children, we would go and have a look,

and they were bringing people out on stretchers

and covering them up.

A doctor had to certify that they were dead

before they carted them away.

We were watching it just like it was an everyday thing.

At first, I was worried about it.

I'd never seen a dead person.

But you do. You get used to these things.

You get used to bombing.

-The Second World War brought home death and destruction

on a hideous scale

right onto our doorsteps and into our homes

in a way that had never been seen before in this country.

You heard stories of going to work in the morning,

you see limbs lying on the street.

The hideousness of a dead baby or a dead child

lying exploded in a mass of gutson the pavement.

-On September 13, 1940,

German bombers embarked on a secret mission.

-Imagine you're a Luftwaffe pilot.

You're a bomber pilot.

You are now carrying out anotherbombing raid on London itself,

but you've found a key feature in the form of the mall there.

What is at the other end?

One of the most famous, if not themost famous

landmark in London itself -- Buckingham Palace.

That is the target.

-Princess Elizabeth's mother described the drama

of what happened next in a letter to Queen Mary.

-My darling Mama, I hardly know how to begin to tell you

of the horrible attack on Buckingham Palace this morning.

Bertie and I arrived there at about quarter to 11:00,

and he and I went up to our poor windowless rooms

to collect a few odds and ends.

At this moment,

we heard the unmistakable "whir, whir" of a German plane.

We said, "Ah, a German."

And before anything else could be said,

there was the noise of aircraft diving at great speed.

-They saw this bomber coming towards them.

Then they suddenly realized, actually --

the king suddenly realized --

"Good heavens, it's coming to us!"

-Imagine the sound of that, when you're sat in your home,

regardless of whether it's Buckingham Palace.

You're sat at your home, and youcan hear the bombs coming down.

-"It all happened so quickly that we only had time

to look foolishly at each other when the scream hurtled past us

and exploded with a tremendous crash in the quadrangle.

-The king and queen were lucky to survive.

But instead of retreating to their daughters in Windsor,

they ventured out to inspect the damage.

-The bombing of Buckingham Palace was a tremendous

personal shock to the Royal Family,

but it legitimized them, also.

The Queen Mother, as you now remember, famously said,

"I'm glad we have been bombed.

I feel we can look the East End in the face."

-Having shared the suffering of the Blitz,

the king and queen met ordinaryLondoners with a new confidence.

As they chatted to people in bomb-damaged areas,

a more informal way

of presenting themselves to the public was emerging.

The newsreel cameras captured their every move.

-They saw the cruel damage inflicted by the Nazis,

and they chatted with many of the people

whose homes have been destroyed

by the savage and indiscriminate raids.

-When we see those pictures

of the king and queen meeting the crowds,

it is the outgoing queen who's always setting the pace,

as it were, and George VI naturally being a step behind.

People came to find that rather appealing and human.

-Keeping the king and queen safe

while traveling around the country

became increasingly challenging.

-Whilst they commuted, really, from Windsor to London

by armored car every day,

they also, during the war years,

undertook no fewer than 300 regional tours

and covered 4,000 miles in the Royal Train

specifically to meet people, to cheer them, to raise morale,

to comfort in whatever way they could.

-One of the people who saw the king and queen

was Ron Batchelor.

-I was standing in the playground,

and somebody said, "Look!"

And he pointed, and we looked up,

and about 50 yards away, I suppose,

we saw the queen and the king in his uniform.

The queen had a fur coat on.

I remember that -- a fur wrap around here --

but it was a kind of a fur thing.

That -- I remember that quite well.

And I couldn't wait to tell my mum, so I left.

When they disappeared, I went running up to my mum,

and I said to my mother, "Mama," I said, "guess what?"

She said, "What?" I said, "The queen's come."

And she said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "I've seen her walking up the other end."

She said to me, "I hope you had your socks pulled up."

-Everywhere, Their Majestiesfound the spirit of these people

still undaunted, while they, for their part,

sincerely appreciated the king and queen's true sympathy.

-They were a very good double act,

and we know

that Elizabeth studied the newsreels of the time,

and these were projected privately to the Royal Family

in Buckingham Palace and Windsor.

After all, they were participants

and wanted to see themselves.

-Visitors were wholeheartedly welcomed everywhere they went.

-Their appearance in the newsreels revealed

the different characters and backgrounds

of Princess Elizabeth's parents.

-Her mother had had a very different upbringing --

aristocratic as opposed to royal, a big family,

a big rumbustious family, the Bowes-Lyons,

and very full of warmth and fun.

By contrast, of course, George VI --

his parents, George V and Queen Mary --

it wasn't that they weren't loving people, essentially,

but not terribly good at showing it.

-Up until then, they were figures

that you just saw all dressed up at the palace,

having their photograph taken for some royal event.

The popularity of the king and queen

and the Royal Family increased.

They'd become more open and more accessible.

And suddenly my family became Royalists,

and that was common everywhere.

-The Royal Family's appearances in cinema newsreels

increased dramatically during the war.

Princess Elizabeth was the first monarch

to grow up in the perpetual gazeof the media,

and she would soon be making a more demanding contribution

to the war effort.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War,

over 14,000 children from wealthy families

were sent to safetyin the United States and Canada.

-The reason we are in America is because

we have been evacuated from England,

and our mothers did not think it was safe

to go and stay in England.

-I came here because the war broke out, to be safe.

-Two children who weren't dispatched

to safety across the Atlantic

were Princess Elizabeth and her sister.

-My sister and I, being so proudthat they were still in England,

because a lot of our friends hadbeen sent to America and Canada.

-Back home, nearly 8,000 children were killed

in the mass bombings of the Blitz,

and many more were seriously injured.

When the government funded overseas evacuation

for 24,000 children from the inner cities,

sending children abroad was no longer seen

as the preserve of the wealthy.

On September 13, 1940,

90 children boarded a ship like this one

to take them to safety in Canada.

The SS City of Benares was four days into its voyage

when it was spotted by a German U-boat.

It was reported that only 7 of the 90 children survived.

The prime minister, Winston Churchill,

canceled all future plansto ship British children abroad.

-Buckingham Palace realized that these two girls

themselves living somewhere in the country,

having had their own house bombed in London,

created a real identity with children.

-On October 13, 1940,

barely a month after the sinkingof SS City of Benares,

Princess Elizabeth recorded a radio broadcast

for the BBC's "Children's Hour,"

transmitted around the world

and heard by evacueesin the United States and Canada.

-My sister, Margaret Rose, and I feel so much for you,

as we know from experience what it means

to be away from those we love most of all.

-For that 14-year-old,

it would have been a demanding thing to have done.

It demonstrated some pretty serious qualities

for a very, very young teenager.

-To you living in new surroundings,

we send a message of true sympathy,

and, at the same time, we would like to thank the kind people

who have welcomed you to their homes in the country.

-And we thought they were in the wireless.

I remember my sister and I sort of looking behind the wireless,

wondering where they were.

-All of us children who are still at home...

-I thought, "Oh, that's Princess Elizabeth

talking to us on the radio."

It was wonderful. Wonderful.

-...think continually

of our friends and relations who have gone --

-A lot of people commented that she sounds just like her mother

and said what a marvelous, authoritative,

and mellow voice she had.

-The king was delighted

because she sounded very much like his wife.

-Many of you have had to see your family life broken up.

-To you, we send a message of true sympathy.

-She also spoke about how, "when peace comes,

it is for us, the children of this generation,

to ensure that war doesn't happen again,"

and that in itself marked her asthe leader for her generation.

-And when peace comes, remember,

it will be for us, the children of today,

to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.

-It was a huge success, 'cause, basically,

it was to America and Canada,

and Elizabeth, being the sort of person she was,

added a little amendment at the end

and brought Princess Margaret into it.

-My sister is by my side,

and we are both going to say good night to you.

Come on, Margaret. -Good night, children.

-Good night, and good luck to you all.

-Well, in America, they loved it so much that,

"Ah, come on, Margaret" became a catchphrase.

And it was a huge success,

and it was seen as slightly propaganda

because it was sort of front page

of all the newspapers in America

that the princess had given this amazing broadcast.

-The education of the nation's children

suffered greatly during the war.

But from the age of 13, the king and queen decided

Princess Elizabeth should be properly prepared

for the life ahead of her.

Less than 3 miles from Windsor Castle,

Eton College presented a solution.

Twice a week, Elizabeth's governess,

Marion Crawford, escorted her to the college.

"Piles of books everywhere,"

wrote Crawford of the tutor's study.

"Crawfie, do you mean to tell mehe's read them all?"

asked Princess Elizabeth.

But soon she was absorbed in the complexities

of the British Constitution.

-All through the emotional experience

of the dangers and terror of war,

she's also learning thetechnicalities of the difference

between proroguing or dissolving or suspending Parliament,

what the Prime Minister has to come to the Sovereign

to do at those times.

And the relationship between George VI and Churchill

became a paradigm which I think we can say

the queen has followed for the rest of her life

of closeness between premier and monarch.

-The king also gave Princess Elizabeth an introduction

to dealing with the endless stream of government papers

in the famous red dispatch boxes.

Elizabeth's mother had different priorities.

She was more concerned with developing

her daughter's social skills and confidence.

She had the idea of putting on Christmas pantomimes

to raise money for the war effort.

The splendor of the Waterloo Chamber played host

to members of the public

who came to see a range of traditional pantomimes

performed throughout the war years.

While Hitler was fighting a losing battle

with the Soviet Union in December 1943,

a 17-year-old Princess Elizabeth

was preparing to play the role of Aladdin.

-The girls helped to make some of the costumes.

It was very much a hands-on affair,

but, production-wise, it was big and professional.

Some press members were invited in

and spoke very, very highly of it.

-The Daily Mirror printed a feature

with a photograph of the princesses

described as "the stars of the show."

-To see the princesses dressed as Aladdin and something,

you know, it was lovely.

We used to cut them out andpin them up on our bedroom wall.

I mean, for the children of Great Britain,

the princesses were --

I always wondered whether they knew how much they meant to us.

-What the pantomimes did do for Princess Elizabeth

was to bring her out of this rather shy character

that she was, and the pantomimesbrought her out of her shell.

-During one performance of "Aladdin,"

Princess Elizabeth was pleased

to see a certain young naval officer in the audience.

-Princess Elizabeth andPrince Philip have kept in touch

during the war.

It hasn't stopped him having other girlfriends in between.

But things really turn around

when he spends Christmas at Windsor.

-They'd be spotted out walking hand in hand.

The moment they realized somebody was looking at them,

they separated.

But for Elizabeth, there was just this one man in her life.

-There was one reporter who interviewed him

called Olga Franklin.

She wrote that "I get dizzy looking at him.

His beauty is so dazzling.

People don't look like this in real life, surely.

This Prince Philip is stunning, with hair like gold coin,

only paler, a sort of ash gold,

eyes of deep blue, almost violetin the electric light,

tall, fine-featured,

really a shockingly beautiful figure in naval uniform."

So we have women who are just being bowled over by him still.

And yet it isn't them that he goes for.

It's Princess Elizabeth.

-Her mother was not at all keen

and had a list of eligible young men for her,

and as far as they were concerned,

Philip was a penniless prince of Greece.

And although his bloodlines were very royal,

they didn't consider him a very good prospect.

-But she knew from the very beginning

that she had to have a husband who would help her do her job,

And that was one of the many attractive qualities of Philip

in her eyes.

Philip was ideal, so that side of her life was sorted.

-As the Nazis launched a new series of raids

on Britain's historic towns, the king appointed his daughter

Colonel in Chief of the Grenadier Guards

to mark her 16th birthday.

Elizabeth is the only woman

appointed to this ceremonial role

in one of the oldest regiments in the British army.

-She was pretty nervous,

and she had to walk up and down these ranks

of very, very tall guardsmen

and look as though she'd been doing it all her life,

which, of course, she did

because she hadthat very disciplined character.

-Here she is as colonel of the Grenadier Guards.

What a change from 13 to 16, you know, growing --

still a little shy, but growing in confidence,

and this parade must have done an enormous amount

for her own personal confidence and morale.

-Hooray! -Hooray!

-Hip, hip, hip!

-Hooray! -Hooray!

-Just four months

after her appointment to the Grenadier Guards,

Princess Elizabeth's much-loved uncle Prince George,

Duke of Kent,was killed in a flying accident.

-We mourn the passing of the king's younger brother,

who lost his life on active service.

The duke, who was an airman in his own right,

had undertaken duties concerningthe welfare of RAF personnel

and was on his way to Iceland when the crash occurred.

-He was flying from Scotland to Iceland,

ostensibly to visit RAF bases.

The flying conditions were not perfect.

There was a mist.

And in those poor flying conditions

thundered into a hillside in Caithness.

And all bar the rear gunner,

including, of course, Prince George, were killed.

-This was the first time in more than 450 years

that a member of the Royal Family died on active service.

Prince George was 39 years old.

He left behind his wife, Princess Marina,

and three young children.

-Every family in the war -- practically every family --

lost somebody.

From that point of view, that wasn't unusual,

but for the Royal Family,

the loss of George of Kent was just hugely devastating.

-Loss is personal,

and I don't think there is any one way of dealing with it.

Whether --

There was a different attitude 50, 60, 70 years ago,

and during the war, there was a different kind of stoicism.

I'm sure that would have appliedto the Royal Family themselves.

I think it underlies so much

of what one encounters with the queen today,

with her sense of duty and her sense of stoicism.

-As she grew older, Princess Elizabeth was expected

to take on more and more public duties...

...from launching ships...

to visiting hospitals...

...and making speech...

-I shall like first to thank you all very much.

-...after speech.

-I have now much pleasure

in declaring the Aberdeen Sailors Home open.

-And now happily chatting to one line of troops...

after another line of troops.

Princess Elizabeth was growing up.

Very soon, she'd be defending the nation

by serving in the military.

June 1944, Windsor Castle,

and the newsreels were about to reveal

one of the most decisive chapters

of the Second World War.

D-Day saw the largest seaborne invasion in history.

The Allied Army was on its way

to liberate German-occupied France.

Seven days after the Normandy landings,

a strange and terrifying sound

was heard tearing across the London sky.

Then the noise stopped.

This was the first rocket-powered missile,

known as the V-1.

The "V" was for "vengeance."

A second V-1 landed yards from Buckingham Palace

and in the middle of a church service.

-A bomb was dropped on the Guards Chapel,

and there were many servicemen and -women killed

and some civilians, too,

including some friends of the Royal Family.

The Royal Family was simply not immune at all.

-With the V-1, London had been plunged

back into the dark days of the Blitz.

1 million people fled the capital

over the next few months.

10 days after the Guards Chapel bomb,

Princess Elizabeth's motherrevealed her worst fears to her.

-"My darling Lilibet, this is just a note

about one or two things in case I get done in by the Germans.

I think that I've left all my things to be divided

between you and Margaret,

but I am sure you will give her anything suitable later on,

such as Mrs. Greville's pearls,

as you will have the crown ones."

-While Princess Elizabeth's mother feared for her life,

she also worried about the safety of her daughters,

who were still in the care of their governess,

Marion Crawford.

-The princesses were in WindsorGreat Park with the Girl Guides,

and Crawfie was with them.

They suddenly looked up, and there was a V-1 in the air,

and she says it was just like being chased by a robot.

The girls threw themselves on the ground,

and they thought the worst was going to happen.

But, fortunately, the bomb passed overhead

and crashed at Windsor Racecourse, a few miles away.

Crawfie said the girls were really starting

to show signs of strain.

-Nearly 10,000 V-1s were fired on Southeast England

during the summer of 1944,

causing terror and terrible damage.

Now 18, Princess Elizabeth was eager

to take a more active role in the war.

She joined the women's branch of the British army --

the Auxiliary Territorial Service, or ATS.

Many of the women took on tasks such as operating radar,

assisting military police,

and crewing anti-aircraft guns.

The service wasn't without its risks to the princess.

It suffered 700 casualties in wartime.

-Her father was not at all keen,and he was nervous of really

letting her go anywhere other than Windsor Castle.

So he said, eventually, "You canjoin up and do the course

and learn whatever it is you want to do,

but you've got to come home at night."

-At an MT training center, Princess Elizabeth,

now a second subaltern in the ATS,

has been on a three-weeks course of instruction.

The princess is at the wheel of a 1,500-weight truck in convoy.

Although she drives it with apparent composure,

she had no experience of driving

before she commenced her training.

-She joined the Transport Division,

taking a mechanics' course.

And the queen was known to have said,

"We had spark plugs all the way through dinner."

So it really mattered to her.

-She really enjoyed hertraining, you know, as a driver.

That's just how I felt. I absolutely loved driving.

And she looked so happy to be able to drive.

She was able to be her own self.

Suddenly, women were useful.

You know, they weren't, "Stay at home

and look after the children."

They could do all sorts of things.

They could go into the factories.

They could do war work of different things.

They could join up like I did.

If you were there, and the bombs were falling,

well, there were very few people

that were sort of running around, shrieking.

If they did, they were out of the army pretty quick.

Also, if you happened to get pregnant,

you were out.

-By joining the ATS in March 1945,

Princess Elizabeth became the only female member

of the Royal Family to serve in the armed forces.

-This, of course, was also

something of a morale booster to the nation,

because they could see the king's elder daughter,

Princess Elizabeth, their future sovereign,

doing what others were doing, what everybody else was doing,

playing their part.

No matter how small, playing their part.

-By the time she finished her training,

the war was drawing to a close.

But she'd learnt some valuable lessons.

-Princess Elizabeth, a humanity

that she might have taken longer to discover,

she shared a lot in common with ordinary people

in that she saw their suffering.She knew about it.

She knew that people looked to her as that new generation --

that new generation of hope.

-Today we give thanks to God.

Germany, the enemy who drove all Europe into war,

has been finally overcome.

-On May 8, 1945, Germany finally surrendered.

Over a million people gathered in Central London

to celebrate Victory in Europe Day.

One small boy was struggling to see the Royal Family.

-I remember some man picked me up and lifted me up

and put me on his shoulders, and I looked.

That was how it was. Everybody was so friendly with everybody.

You can't live in that atmosphere all the time.

But they came onto the balcony,

and the king with his uniform on.

And it went on for hour after hour after hour.

-Elizabeth said to her father, "You know,

could we go out in it, see what's going on?"

It was so exciting.

-She was delighted when the king agreed

that she could go out in the crowd

with Princess Margaret and some friends

and with some officers to keep an eye on them.

She was in her ATS uniform, so she was still dressed up.

And she didn't want to be recognized.

And she tried to pull her cap over her forehead

so that she wouldn't be recognized.

And one of the officers said,

"You know, you can't go like that.

Put your cap back properly."

-This was the one time in her life when she could just be

second subaltern, ordinary, junior commander, ordinary,

Miss Windsor, ordinary.

Dancing down the mound,

dancing their way up Piccadilly,St. James's,

and at one point,

grabbing the cap off the head of a sailor,

who then he was chasing after them to get his cap back.

-The future queen mingled unnoticed among her people.

For once in her life, she was just another face in the crowd.

-She actually described it

as the most exciting night of her life.

-I think that the war made Princess Elizabeth

grow up like it made me grow up.

It really made her.

It made her closer to the people,

who she reigned as subjects.

And it made us closer to her,

because they had been in the war,

and right through the war, they were one of us.

The Royal Family were one of us.

-Two years after the revelers had gone home,

Princess Elizabeth chose the occasion of her 21st birthday

to make a vowto the people of her generation.

-I am thinking especially today of all the young men and women

who were born about the same time as myself

and have grown up, like me,

in terrible and glorious years of the Second World War.

I declare before you all that my whole life,

whether it be long or short,shall be devoted to your service

and to the service of our great imperial family

to which we all belong.

God help me to make good my vow,

and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.