How the King's cousin swapped Colditz for the Palace just in time for VE Day

Telegraph

07-05-2025

As she welcomed VE Day veterans to her tea party at Buckingham Palace on Monday, Queen Camilla inevitably spared a moment to remember one valiant warrior who couldn't be there – her father, the swashbuckling former cavalryman Major Bruce Shand.
Shand, a career soldier and later wine merchant who died in 2006, flew home from his two-and-a-half year incarceration in a German prisoner of war camp just in time to celebrate VE Day with the crowds outside Buckingham Palace in May 1945.
Within the palace walls were two more recently released prisoners of war: King Charles's great-uncle, George Lascelles (later the Earl of Harewood), and Charles's first cousin once removed, John Elphinstone. Both had returned to Britain the night before.
Inmates of the notorious Colditz Castle, their well-being had been a cause of special anxiety for their uncle and aunt, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, due to their proximity to the throne. Shand, still years away from joining the royal circle, was perhaps the most distinguished soldier of the three, though the hardships they endured were shared by all.
After attending Rugby (which he described as 'a school I cordially disliked'), Bruce Shand was commissioned into the 12th Lancers, an historic cavalry regiment once served by the great Duke of Wellington. At 23, he earned his first Military Cross at Dunkirk. Another followed in January 1942, when he demonstrated exceptional bravery under attack by the German Afrika Corps in the Western Desert, North Africa.
In November 1942, during the Second Battle of El Alamein, Shand came under fire again. His armoured car was destroyed by enemy gunfire, and he was badly wounded and captured. Shand endured a long journey, first to Greece and then on to Spangenberg near Frankfurt, where he joined 300 other prisoner-of-war officers at the local 13th-century castle.
Shand had suffered debilitating injuries, nearly losing an eye and a leg, but his memories of the Spangenberg years remained upbeat and wry. Dunkirk, he recalled, was 'unpleasant' while Spangenberg was 'neither Shepherds nor Claridges'.
But in the early days of his imprisonment, Shand was haunted by waves of remorse over the loss of the two crew members in his vehicle. 'They had considerable trust in me, a trust that had been betrayed, even if their deaths were blessedly instant,' he wrote. In hindsight, it's clear Shand made no tactical error – he had simply been ambushed by the Germans.
At Spangenberg, he quickly learned to rely on his wits. He delivered lectures to fellow prisoners on the progress of the war but kept a decoy subject at the ready in case a guard entered unexpectedly. His chosen cover? 'The flora and fauna of Lower Egypt and the seasonal fall and rise of the Nile.'
He was appointed security officer – responsible for operating whatever clandestine wireless set could be cobbled together, at least until its inevitable discovery by the guards. He transcribed broadcasts from the outside world and quietly passed on the intelligence to fellow prisoners. He also became the camp's 'laundry officer' – a role that officially involved washing but in practice meant bribing guards and local laundresses for precious scraps of information.
The long days of capture were cold, malnourished, claustrophobic and depressing. Shand found solace in the prison library, voraciously consuming history, biography and memoirs. In the spring and summer he was permitted to do some gardening and timber-cutting, but in the dark winter months the prisoners had to entertain themselves with drama productions and lectures.
'Not all of these talks were rewarding,' he observed drily in his memoirs. 'The Albigensian heresy, the classified claret growths of Bordeaux, the manufacture of scent, the breeding of racing pigeons, heraldry, the Pentateuch – there was always someone who had a knowledge of these abstruse matters.
'I believe there was even a set or two of bagpipes, but their use was actively discouraged.'
A passing acquaintance at Spangenberg was King George VI's nephew – George Lascelles, son of his sister Mary, Princess Royal. A 21-year-old lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, Lascelles had been captured after being wounded during the Italian campaign in June 1944.
Soon Lascelles was moved on to Colditz Castle, 200 miles deeper into eastern Germany. 'Everyone there either had a record of escape or some other punishable offence,' he recalled years later. '[My offence] was to have prominent relations'.
He became one of the Prominente – the German term used during the Second World War to describe a select group of captured personnel with real or imagined connections in high places. Elphinstone was another.
Compared with Spangenberg, the regime at Colditz was harsher, more brutal – prisoners existing on rations which yielded no more than 1,100 calories a day: 'To go upstairs meant either a pause after a few steps or a blackout,' he recalled.
Much of Lascelles's day during the winter was spent fully dressed in bed. As the war dragged on, many of the longer-serving prisoners – those captured at Dunkirk, for instance – began to suffer nervous breakdowns; the wait had simply gone on too long. Others, more resilient, buried themselves in writing, while Lascelles – who would later become a leading figure in British opera – took up the clarinet.
'Poker schools, music appreciation groups, philosophy classes, history lectures – we tried every kind of activity, intellectual or otherwise, until in the end the cold beat us,' wrote Lascelles in his memoirs. 'Colditz, I realised, played Redbrick to Spangenberg's Oxbridge – rougher perhaps, more energetic certainly, the atmosphere far less rarefied.'
One officer who kept very much to himself at Colditz was Elphinstone. Educated at Eton, he was among kindred spirits, but somehow remained austere and apart. 'He seemed to operate in a kind of deep freeze,' recalled Giles Romilly, nephew of Clementine Churchill and another of the Prominente.
The Elphinstone family had been Scottish lairds since the 13th century and lived in considerable splendour. John, a lifelong bachelor, was a Black Watch officer among those forced to surrender at the Battle of Abbeville in 1940. He would spend nearly five years as a German prisoner, and his remoteness – along with his insistence on correctness in all things – was likely a defence mechanism. Yet, according to fellow PoW Martin Gilliatt (later Sir Martin, private secretary to the Queen Mother), he was 'the kindest, most undemanding and understanding friend one could possibly have.'
Not everyone agreed. The senior officer among the Prominente, Elphinstone deplored sloppiness and shabbiness in dress among his fellow prisoners – and never hesitated to express his disapproval, harshly, despite the appalling conditions in which they were held.
The Queen felt a special closeness to her nephew, and he to her, after she visited his regiment and momentarily mistook him for her dead brother Fergus – another Black Watch officer – who had perished in the First World War. Though no blood relation to the Royal family, Elphinstone took his connections very seriously. When writing letters home, he referred to each member by the nicknames known only to them – his aunt, the Queen, was always given a boy's name.
Despite this reclusive nature, he was to save the lives of his fellow Prominente as the Allies finally headed towards Colditz in late April 1945. 'He was a personality that was to play a resolute, decisive and quite possibly providential part in the impending dangers,' declared Romilly.
As the Allies advanced, the Nazi high command issued the order to evacuate the camps. In both Spangenberg and Colditz, fear spread among the prisoners that they may be used as human shields, or merely taken out and shot. For the Prominente, there was the added threat that they might be handed over to the Gestapo, in whose hands they would most certainly perish.
Shand and his fellow prisoners were forced to march for two days towards the Wehra river but, the following night, he and a few others slipped away from the column and hid in nearby woods: 'The rain was heavy, cold and there was an unpleasant eerie feeling with shells passing overhead.' Though this group was now nominally free, roaming groups of Hitler-Jugend – 'hair-trigger adolescents' – were a constant threat.
Eventually, Shand's party linked up with liberating US Army forces, who sent Shand by air to Paris via Luxembourg
His escape was cunning and successful, though relatively simple compared to that of Elphinstone and the Prominente back at Colditz. One night, these prized hostages were ordered onto a bus with no information about their destination and they feared the worst.
Their journey took them first to one detention centre, then another, before arriving at a civilian internment camp in Laufen. Here, they feared their military status would be revoked, leaving them vulnerable to elimination. The normally reticent Elphinstone, however, raised his voice and demanded they be moved to a military camp. His assumed authority – 'as if he were in command of both the Germans and the British' – worked, and they were subsequently taken to Tittmoning Castle in Bavaria.
The Prominente were determined to escape, and at Tittmoning, they discovered a secret hiding place within the 6ft-thick prison walls, left by previous PoWs. One night, one of them cut through the exterior perimeter wire, creating the illusion that they had escaped into the open countryside. In reality, they had concealed themselves in the cramped, tiny space within the wall, with a view to hiding there until the Americans or Russians arrived.
'In its way it was not without luxury,' recalled Lascelles drily. 'There was a great tin bucket which served as a lavatory. Only two could lie down so we slept in two-hour shifts, changing places when it was our turn.'
They survived three days, trying to read in the sparse daylight filtering through a hole in the wall, and talking only in whispers. Looked at from this distance, it's impossible to see how five men managed to survive so long in a space no bigger than a large wardrobe, but in the end they were discovered.
Ironically, the camp commandant was relieved to see them again – he had been condemned to death for allowing their escape but was now reprieved. However, they were once again loaded onto a bus and sent onward, still with no idea whether their special status would result in being treated like VIPs at their destination or, worse, being executed.
In fact, the Prominente had become pawns in a high-stakes game, with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Gestapo, eager to get his hands on the hostages. They were also informed by General Berger, an SS official, that he had received orders from Hitler to have them killed – though he insisted he wasn't going to carry them out.
Berger arranged for Elphinstone, Lascelles and the rest to be moved to a transit camp at Markt Pongau (today St Johann in Pongau) where they were introduced to a Swiss intermediary who guaranteed their safe delivery into Allied hands. A German doctor, ready to give himself up, was added to the group as a potential safeguard against further military interference.
Finally transferred to a larger vehicle, the group slowly approached the Allied lines, fearful that a trigger-happy US soldier might open fire on the unfamiliar convoy. But they arrived safely in Salzburg, where, that night, John Elphinstone received an unexpected call from the Queen. She insisted that he and George Lascelles return immediately to Buckingham Palace, where a champagne-laden dinner awaited them.
The following day, May 8, 1945, Britain celebrated VE Day. The Royal family, with their ex-PoW relatives taking a back seat, waved to the cheering crowds from the Buckingham Palace balcony.
Bruce Shand, still outside the royal circle, flew back from Paris, where he was warmly greeted by Rosalind Cubitt, the former debutante he had escorted to her pre-war coming-out dance – the last of peacetime. Once safely home, he proposed marriage.
Eight months later, the couple wed at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge. A year after that, Major Shand became the proud father of Camilla, the future queen.