Caithness Field Club

Caithness Field Club Bulletin
1991

By the Summer of 1918 Germany could not win the war and revolution was breaking out. Kaiser Wilhelm would soon be deposed and the British popular press, many Americans, and all Frenchmen called for a War Trial. However the Kaiser was the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria, and Admiral of the Fleet in the British Navy, so the British Establishment determined to prevent unpleasantness.

Revealed for the first time, a Bulletin exclusive, is the plan to exile the Kaiser in St Helena, and Major John Elliot George Follett of the Royal Engineers (Grandfather of Lyndall Leet) was briefed to arrange the transfer and exile.

In the event the Ex-Kaiser approached the neutral Dutch Count Godard Bentinck and went to the Count's moated house at Amerongen. It is probable that the Kaiser was secretly brought to Braemore Lodge in Caithness, owned by the Count's cousin the 6th Duke of Portland, and there looked after by a maid who around 1942, bedridden and living with her son, the Chief Gamekeeper, described the event. (The information in this paragraph comes from "Points of view" in The Scotsman, 12-9-85 and 6-11-85).

The Kaiser and the Crown Prince, "Little Willy", settled in an estate in neutral Holland. "Little Willy" survived to see Holland invaded in 1940, and was treated with distant formality by Hitler's army.

Geoff Leet