On the day Princes William and Harry learned of their mother\u2019s terrible car accident, the royal bodyguard who was with them passed away.
\nNicknamed \u2018Crackers\u2019 by the two Princes, Graham Craker, 77, had served 35 years as a Metropolitan Police officer.<\/p>\n
Before retiring in 2001, he had been the lads\u2019 personal protection officer for 15 years.<\/p>\n
Craker was with the couple in Balmoral, Scotland, on the day of Diana\u2019s passing. They were accompanied by their grandparents, Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, as well as their father, Prince Charles, who was then Prince Charles.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the New York Post in 2017, Craker described hearing the news:\u00a0\u201cPerhaps the most emotional was seeing William the morning after.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I saw William walking his dog outside, and I walked up to him and said,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m very, very sorry to hear your bad news.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0William very sadly said,<\/p>\n Craker went behind William and Harry on the day of the funeral as the hearse carrying their mother\u2019s remains traveled from St. James\u2019s Palace to Westminster Abbey.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI was standing at the rear of the hearse and William looked up and acknowledged me. I looked toward him and nodded. William was comforted that I was with his mum on her final journey.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere were people in tears, on their knees crossing themselves, throwing flowers at the hearse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe bit that amazed me is when we got on the northbound M1, even the southbound traffic had stopped and people got out of their cars and bowed in respect.\u201d<\/p>\n Even in their own correspondence, the Princes\u2019 affection for Craker was clear in their descriptions of their protection officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the day Princes William and Harry learned of their mother\u2019s terrible car accident, the royal bodyguard who was with them passed away. Nicknamed \u2018Crackers\u2019 by the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17367,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17365\/revisions\/17367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutlife.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}