Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall joined her husband Prince Charles, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni at a Remembrance day memorial service in France yesterday.
The royal couple were greeted like old friends when they arrived at the Elysee Palace ahead of the Armistice Day commemorations - which this year marked the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War - with the president bending to kiss Camilla on the hand.
The quartet attended a service in Fort Dounaumont in Verdun, north-west France where they stood and remembered those killed at war. As they stood solemnly, Camilla could be clearly seen wearing a red poppy and blue cornflower - the French equivalent of the flower sported as a symbol of memorial on Armistice day.
Charles and Camilla's decision to attend the service in Verdun, an exclusively Franco-German battlefield, has caused controversy with some British veterans.
Brian Churchcroft, a British veteran who fought through France in the Normandy campaign of 1944, said: "It does seem odd that a battle which was nothing to do with the British is the focal point of commemorations."
"Members of the royal family would certainly have been better off attending our own battlefields."
A source close to the organizers said: "The kind of dignified ceremony which has taken place in Paris for decades would have been perfectly appropriate."
 |  |  |  |
