The Duchess of Cornwall paid tribute to the fallen and honoured veterans today at Westminster Abbey’s Field of Remembrance.
Camilla, who is patron of the poppy factory, attended an Armistice Day service attended by hundreds of veterans, after last year’s event was drastically scaled back due to the pandemic.
She was greeted by the dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, president of the poppy factory and Alistair Kett, the factory’s chairman of board of trustees, who escorted her throughout the service.
Shortly before the 11am national silence, the duchess briefly chatted to some of the abbey’s clergy, wearing a bottle green Rifles coat by Fiona Clare and her Rifles brooch, the regiment of which she is now colonel, having taken on the role from the Duke of Edinburgh last year.
Solemnly bowing her head in front of two wooden crosses from the graves of unknown British soldiers from the First and Second World Wars as the dean said prayers, Camilla then laid a small wooden cross of remembrance on a large cross made up of poppies.
On Tuesday, the duchess had visited the poppy factory site in Richmond, to put the finishing touches to her wooden cross.
The Last Post was then played by a trumpeter from the roof of the abbey, followed by the “exhortation to remembrance” before Big Ben’s chimes sounded at 11am, signalling the national two-minute silence, which ended with the trumpeter’s Reveille.
The duchess then spent time viewing several memorial plots for regimental and other associations, meeting veterans and representatives from the Armed Forces including the Rifles, the Submariners Association, the RAF Association and the The Royal Lancers, the regiment of her late father, Major Bruce Shand.
This year’s field comprises more than 300 plots planted with 70,000 Remembrance symbols. It was the second time Camilla visited the field of remembrance, having attended the opening ceremony last year, when no veterans or invited guests were able to attend.
The duchess stopped to chat with Chelsea Pensioner, Fred Bolwell, 92, who served with the Royal Tank Regiment for 24 years and Major Hugo White, 91, of the Somerset Light Infantry who served in Malaya, Jordan, Cyprus and Northern Ireland.
“It is very important to have her here today, because she is a member of the royal family who we look up to,” said Major White.
After making her way through both sides of the field lined with veterans, accompanied by Major Jonny Thompson, the Prince of Wales’s equerry, in a poignant nod to a tradition established by the Duke of Edinburgh on occasions like today when the Field of Remembrance event fell on Armistice Day, the duchess visited the grave of the unknown warrior inside the abbey, where she laid a symbolic bouquet of flowers on the grave in remembrance.
Her floral tribute included red garden roses for love and devotion, thyme, an ancient symbol of strength and courage, bay, the reward for merit, lavender for protection and rose hips, a symbol of farewell.
Camilla will accompany her husband Prince Charles, alongside the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on Saturday night at the annual Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.
The Queen will not attend due to the length of the service after she was ordered by doctors to rest, but is "determined" to make the Remembrance Sunday service at the cenotaph in London.
