THE Duchess of Cornwall struggled to contain her emotions yesterday as she visited the graves of two men who died at her father’s side in the Second World War.

She told how the bullet that wounded her father killed one of his soldiers.

The Duchess and the Prince of Wales picked their way through the massed ranks of more than 7,000 marbled tombstones at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at El Alamein to find the graves of the two men that her father had been commanding after the intensive and decisive battle of the North African campaign.

The Duchess placed a bunch of cream roses and handwritten cards beneath each headstone. She paused with her head bowed and the Prince talked quietly to her and then passed her a handkerchief to blow her nose as they walked away.

“I have got a huge lump in my throat,” she said afterwards in a rare public comment. “It left me with such a lump it’s quite hard to speak. I found it very, very moving. I’m so pleased to have done it for my father. They were killed in their armoured car when he was with them.”

Her father, Major Bruce Shand, 89 and in frail health, could not travel to join the couple in Egypt. Some years before his daughter became a public figure he wrote a memoir, Previous Engagements, about his war service in the 12th Royal Lancers. He won two MCs and was congratulated by Winston Churchill before El Alamein.

On November 6, 1942, his squadron of armoured vehicles was participating in the pursuit of Axis Panzer divisions retreating across the vast Western Desert when they encountered enemy forces.

He was riding in a car being driven by Corporal Edward Plant, 32, accompanied by Sergeant Charles Francis, 21, his wireless operator, when they came under fire from troops they had initially thought were British.

“Something like a whiplash stung my cheek and Sergeant Francis beside me slumped to the bottom of the car with a large hole in his chest, killed instantly. I could hear all the other cars firing away hard. My mouth was full of blood but I managed to tell Corporal Plant, my imperturbable driver, to turn the car around.”

The car started to move “but something hit it a tremendous blow, and I saw poor Plant subside over his wheel; a second later the car began to burn”.

“Crawling forward I found that Plant was dead and I prepared to leave the vehicle. I got through the top, jumped down and sheltered under the leeward side, firing still going on around me and from the remainder of the squadron.”

Another officer tried to haul Shand into his car. “I managed to hang on rather precariously to his hand as we began to move. It was then that I was hit in the knee, and in the sudden shock I let go, although he tried to hold me. I do not remember hitting the ground. A buzz of German voices greeted my return to consciousness.”

Major Shand was held as a Prisoner of War until 1945. He still has the scar under one eye from that day. He described Sergeant Francis as “a man in a thousand who could be relied upon to retain his sang-froid indefinitely — mine usually dissolved after an hour”.

In the handwritten card that his daughter placed at the grave, he said: “The gallantry and sacrifice of two fellow 12th Lancers on November 6, 1942, will never be forgotten by me. Bruce Shand.”

The Duchess added: “The bullet that killed Sergeant Francis went through his (Shand’s) cheek and killed Sergeant Francis.”

She said that the men who died in the conflict were “absolutely wonderful. Very, very brave. Incredibly young. I’m so glad to come here and I’m so glad I could do it for him.”

Under a cloudless sky, the temperature in the mid-80s, the Prince and Duchess entered the cemetery through an honour guard of peacekeeping troops serving in Sinai.

A small invited group of officials, dignitaries and British ex-patriates from nearby Alexandria stood to one side behind the velvet ropes that have accompanied the couple everywhere they have been on their trip to Egypt this week.

The Rev Mark Cregan, the chaplain of All Saints and St Marks in Alexandria, and the only British Church of England vicar in Egypt, paid tribute to those who had given their lives in “one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War. We are surrounded by the graves of those who paid the price for the freedom we enjoy. We remember the incredible bravery of those men and women.”

The Prince stepped forward to place a wreath on the Stone of Remembrance, which honours not just those who died at the battle of El Alamein between October 23 and November 4, 1942, but all who were killed in the desert operation. The plinth bears the inscription: “Their Name Liveth For Evermore.”

The Prince looked out to the great expanse of desert beyond the cemetery. He appeared lost in thought, reflecting perhaps on the horrors his father-in-law had seen more than 60 years ago.

The Duchess, in a hyacinth suit, stood solemnly, fiddling with her straw hat, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses, as two buglers sounded the Last Post.

In the ensuing two-minute silence, even the shutters of the press cameras fell silent; the only sound was the refreshing breeze rustling the leaves of the blooming pink bougainvillea bushes.

Simon Fletcher, regional manager for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, led the Prince and Duchess through the neat row of graves to where Sergeant Francis and Corporal Plant lie, a few yards apart. Corporal Plant’s stone has been inscribed: “His life for his country. Always remembered by Mom, Dad, Brothers and relations.” Sergeant Francis’s reads: “ ‘I triumph still if thou abide with me.’ Mother ’s love, dear.”

The royal couple were flying last night to Saudi Arabia to continue their tour.

Churchill said of Montgomery: “In defeat unbeatable. In victory unbearable”

Times Recommends

• Zardari still has to tackle tough questions
• Material evidence 'debunks' Turin Shroud
• BBC criticised over Uganda gay execution poll