Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark - Exile From Greece

Exile From Greece

For three years, Constantine's second son, Alexander, was king of Greece, until his early death from the after effects of a monkey bite. Constantine was restored, and Andrew was once again reinstated in the army, this time as a major-general. The family took up residence at Mon Repos.

Andrew was given command of the Second Army Corps during the Battle of the Sakarya, which effectively stalemated the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). Andrew had little respect for his superior officers, whom he considered incompetent. On 19 September 1921, Andrew was ordered to attack the Turkish positions, which he considered a desperate move little short "of ill-concealed panic". Refusing to put his men in undue danger, Andrew followed his own battle plan, much to the dismay of the commanding general, Anastasios Papoulas. Relieved of his Chief of Staff, and given a dressing-down by Papoulas, Andrew offered to resign his command but Papoulas refused. The Turks attacked and Andrew's Greek troops were forced to retreat. Andrew was placed on leave for two months, until he was transferred to the Supreme Army Council. In March 1922, he was appointed as commander of the Fifth Army Corps of Epirus and the Ionian Islands. Papoulas was replaced by General Georgios Hatzianestis.

Dissatisfaction with the progress of the war led to another coup d'état in 1922 during which Prince Andrew was arrested, court-martialled and found guilty of "disobeying an order" and "acting on his own initiative" during the battle the previous year. Many defendants in the treason trials that followed the coup were shot, including Hatzianestis and five senior politicians. British diplomats assumed that Andrew was also in mortal danger. Andrew, though spared, was banished for life and his family fled into exile aboard a British cruiser, HMS Calypso. The family settled in a small house loaned to them by Andrew's wealthy sister-in-law, Princess George of Greece, at Saint-Cloud on the outskirts of Paris.

In 1930, Andrew published a book entitled Towards Disaster: The Greek Army in Asia Minor in 1921, in which he defended his actions during the Battle of the Sakarya, but he essentially lived a life of enforced retirement, despite only being in his forties. During their time in exile the family became more and more dispersed. Alice suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in Switzerland. Their daughters married and settled in Germany, separated from Andrew, and Philip was sent to school in the United Kingdom, where he was brought up by his mother's British relatives. Andrew went to live in the South of France.

On the French Riviera, Andrew lived in a small apartment, or hotel rooms, or on board a yacht with his lady friend, Countess Andrée de La Bigne. His marriage to Alice was effectively over, and after her recovery and release, she returned to Greece. In 1936, his sentence of exile was quashed by emergency laws, which also restored land and annuities to the King. Andrew returned to Greece for a brief visit that May. The following year, his daughter Cécile, son-in-law and two of his grandchildren were killed in an air accident at Ostend; he met Alice for the first time in six years at the funeral, which was also attended by Hermann Göring.

At the start of World War II, he found himself essentially trapped in Vichy France, while his son, Prince Philip, fought on the side of the British. They were unable to see or even correspond with one another. Two of Andrew's surviving sons-in-law fought on the German side: Prince Christoph of Hesse was a member of the Nazi Party and the Waffen-SS, and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, was invalided out of the German army in 1940 after an injury in France. For five years, Andrew saw neither his wife nor his son. He died in the Metropole Hotel, Monte Carlo, Monaco of heart failure and arterial sclerosis just as the war was ending.

Andrew was at first buried in the Russian Orthodox church in Nice, but in 1946 his remains were transferred, by Greek cruiser, to the royal cemetery at Tatoi Palace, near Athens.