ROYAL ORDER
I planned Queen’s funeral – from soldiers tripping up to band out of tune…here’s why rehearsals were a total disaster
Garrison Sergeant Major Andrew “Vern” Stokes reveals the three night-time practices became a “comedy of errors”
WITH four billion pairs of eyes watching around the globe, if you were the man who had planned the funeral of Queen Elizabeth you would be forgiven for being a nervous wreck.
But as Garrison Sergeant Major Andrew “Vern” Stokes stood behind the late Queen’s coffin, he was totally calm.
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In an exclusive interview with The Sun, he reveals the inside story of what really happened in the ten days before Her Majesty’s funeral.
And he admits the reason he was certain the day would pass without a hitch was because rehearsals for the biggest royal event in living memory had been “a total disaster”.
Coldstream Guardsman GSM Stokes, who stands 6ft 4in in his highly polished size 12 boots, says at times the three night-time practices became a “comedy of errors”.
Vern, 51, also reveals how the new King, his heir Prince William, and siblings Anne, Andrew and Edward, held a meeting and decided they wanted GSM Stokes to walk between them and the coffin.
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Vern, known by everyone from the Monarch to the lowliest soldier simply as Garrison, says: “Lots of people have asked, ‘Did you feel nervous?’. Genuinely, I didn’t.”
‘The nickname stuck’
There is a saying that if you have a poor rehearsal it will be a good event. It should have been immaculate, because the rehearsal could not have gone any worse.
“Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong on the overnight rehearsal.
"It was so dark and the musicians couldn’t read their music cards — they played every note but I don’t know what order they were playing them in.
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“The Gentlemen at Arms (the Sovereign’s military bodyguard) who flanked the state gun carriage hadn’t listened to my brief as we left New Palace Yard in Westminster Hall.
“They ended up coming out of an exit like a football turnstile and by the time we got the state gun carriage to Westminster Abbey, I was looking around wondering where they all were.
“Then I told them not to flank the state gun carriage as we went through Wellington Arch because it was so narrow.
“But they ignored it and then they realised there wasn’t enough room for them.
"One tripped over and got run over by the carriage.”
Andrew Stokes was a poor council house kid from Shropshire who joined the Army at 16.
On his first overseas posting, to Cyprus aged 17, he stood up to a bully in the regiment and one of his comrades compared his bravery to that of Big Vern, from Viz magazine.
He says: “The name stuck, which is kind of bizarre.”
After tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, he was selected as Academy Sergeant Major at Sandhurst military academy, when Princes Harry and William were there.
Later, when he was asked to recommend someone who could take over as Garrison Sergeant Major for the London District — a role which includes organising royal ceremonies — he said: “Of course I can. It’s me. I’ll do it.”
For the past eight years he has been in charge of every major military ceremony, from Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday to the Queen’s 90th birthday, her Platinum Jubilee and Prince Philip’s funeral.
On September 8 last year, he was at Windsor Castle when rumours grew that the 96-year-old Queen was on her deathbed at Balmoral.
Vern rushed back to London to go over plans for the first 48 hours after her death — including getting a team of Grenadier Guardsmen back from Iraq in time to carry the coffin.
He says: “There are eight state trumpeters in the Army. We only allow four to go away because whenever Her Majesty died, four were needed for the proclamation next day.
“I checked where the four state trumpeters were in the UK and all eight were on a plane to Canada.
“So I messaged the band to say as soon as they landed, get back on the next plane please.
"The next ten days were like being on a treadmill on level nine, unable to get off.
“By the end of it I was purely running on adrenalin. There wasn’t much time for sleep.”
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During those days, Vern went to Buckingham Palace three times to brief the King and Royal Family.
He remembers: “It was very sombre. At the heart of everything we were delivering was a really close family deep in mourning, and we had to be respectful of that.
“I remember going to brief the King on the day that we moved Her Majesty from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall.
“I finished briefing the King and the Royal Family when he said, ‘Where are you going to be, Garrison, during all these proceedings?’.
“I said, ‘Well, you won’t necessarily see me, but I’ll be around and I can offer guidance or get involved if anything goes wrong’.
“And he said, ‘We’ve had a discussion and we’d quite like you to be behind Her Majesty’s coffin, directly in front of us, and talk us through what we have got to do on a daily basis whenever we are in the processions’.
“That’s exactly what happened. I saw my role now as being there to support the King and Royal Family and to talk them through it.
“My emotions had to get put to one side because right behind me was this incredibly close family who were grieving for their mother, and that was always at the front of my mind.”
As those four billion TV viewers saw, the moving funeral of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch went without a hitch.
And as a thank-you for his work on the ceremony, the Royal Family made GSM Stokes a Member of the Royal Victorian Order.
My three plans for the King
SHORTLY after the Queen’s funeral, King Charles asked Vern and his team to come up with three plans for his Coronation on May 6.
Vern says: “The Brigade Major and I went to Buckingham Palace and we had a brief. It was: think humility, built into jubilation; magnificent, not ostentatious; and relevant for today.
“Three weeks later, just before Christmas, we presented three plans, including our favoured one, and that was the one that the King went for, and that is what we delivered on May 6.”
It included a short procession from Westminster Abbey to the Palace, rather than repeating the five-mile route of 1953, which would have cost a fortune had they removed all the new bollards and road signs that would be in the way.
The grateful King awarded Vern the Royal Victorian Order and the OBE for his work on the Coronation, and this week the veteran received his OBE from Charles at the Palace.
In the Queen’s 70-year reign she had 15 Prime Ministers but only eight Garrison Sergeant Majors.
Vern, her last one, who will retire in just over three years, says: “My predecessors would have bitten your hand off for just one of the many opportunities I’ve had in my time as Garrison Sergeant Major.”
Bafta for GSM
ON a shelf in the Garrison Sergeant Major’s office overlooking Horse Guards Parade is a Bafta, given to Vern for his work on the annual Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance.
The ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall includes retired Army veterans the Chelsea Pensioners marching down the steps – and Vern says they are the most nervous participants.
He says: “If they get it wrong they get a lot of mickey-taking by comrades so I give them as much rehearsal time as I can.”
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This year’s festival, on November 11, is Vern’s eighth in charge, and his fiancée Sue, whose first husband John was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, will look after the 20 widows and bereaved families taking part.
Vern had a quirky secret code phrase – “vegetable lasagne” – to let Sue know that the Queen had died and that he would be totally absobed for the next ten days.
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