Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has met with a veteran who escaped imprisonment with her late father during World War II.
The 69-year-old royal visited Norman Hardie Winery in Southern Ontario, Canada, over the weekend where she was introduced to 92-year-old former Green Jacket lieutenant Edward Rose.
During her conversation with Edward, he revealed he had been captured by Nazi forces during the war and imprisoned in Spangenberg Castle alongside British officers, including Camilla’s late father Major Bruce Shand, who passed away in 2006.
Edward told Camilla: "I was in the second wave that went in after D-Day in 1944 and I was a prisoner for about six or seven months.
"Spangenberg was supposed to be a place where you couldn’t escape from, there were a lot of people from my regiment who had been captured at Calais and spent five years there."
The soldier went on to tell the royal – who is married to Prince Charles – about how he and her father escaped the prison with the help of a German-speaking Irishman.
He continued: "Bruce and I knew both knew an Irishman called Terence in my regiment who spoke excellent German, because he’d been at Munich University before the war and escaped seven times but never made it.
"We were all in a barn and Terence said, ‘Don’t let’s move on in the morning, we’ll go into the woods’, he talked to one or two of the guards in his excellent German and said, ‘We’re going’ and they said they couldn’t care less because they wanted to go home."
The Duchess’ late father served with the 12th Lancers during World War II, and passed away 11 years ago at the age of 89 after suffering with cancer.
Camilla told Edward: "I’m so sorry he’s not here for me to be able to tell him that I met you."
Duchess Camilla meets with veteran who knew her late father
