jazzeum
Four Star General
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2005
- Messages
- 38,433
(continued from previous thread)
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On emerging from the sick bay he found that General Eisenhower had absolved officers from the duty of escaping because the Germans were unlikely to respect the rules of war. Shand took on such responsiblities as laundry officer and taking down BBC radio broadcasts. The camp was short of food in the later months of the war, but Shand received monthly parcels of books sent out from a shop in Piccadilly, and was able to devote several hours a day to reading history and biography as well as Thackeray and Trollope, for whom he developed a lifelong affection.
As the Allied forces approached in March 1945, Shand and his comrades were moved out of the castle and were marched for two days. Their guards, however, were elderly and tired easily, and he escaped from the column. He hid in woods for two days and nights, "dodging the hair-trigger adolescents of the Hitler Youth", as he said afterwards, until joining up with the American forces.
After being debriefed in Paris he flew back to England, where, in 1946, he married Rosalind Cubitt, the daughter of the 3rd Lord Ashcombe and a descendant of Thomas Cubitt, the builder of Mayfair and Belgravia and Bloomsbury; she was also (as their daughter Camilla was to be reminded, at least by newspapers) the granddaughter of Alice Keppel, mistress of King Edward VII.
(continued from previous thread)
***
Like many young men just out of the Army, Shand took some time to find a suitable job, working first for an educational films company then going into the wine business. With a friend, he first took over Block, Grey and Block in South Audley Street, a firm of old-fashioned wine merchants which supplied Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The firm eventually ran into difficulties, and he joined Ellis, Son and Vidler, of Hastings and London, with which he remained until his retirement.
In time he had a house in Kensington and another at the Sussex village of Plumpton, close to the racecourse, where he and his wife brought up their son, Mark, and two daughters, Camilla and Annabel. This gave him plenty of opportunity to indulge his passion for hunting.
As joint master of the Southdown Hunt in the early 1970s he was driven to declare that some of the people who went out with the hounds were distinctly unkempt. "Nobody can be expected to have a vast wardrobe by Christian Dior, but if they can afford to buy a horse they can afford to keep it and themselves clean. It's offensive to the farmers, you know. One or two have said to me: 'We welcome the hunt, major, but can't you tell some of those blighters to be less scruffy'."
At the same Shand served as Vice Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex and worked his way up the Queen's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard to become Clerk of the Cheque. It was a career, he joked, that involved dressing as if to fight the battle of Waterloo.
In his latter years Bruce Shand devoted much of his energy to nursing his wife; she died of the bone-wasting disease osteoporosis in 1994. He also produced Previous Engagements, a slim volume of war memoirs spiced with shafts of humour, and reviewed military books for Country Life.
Sir John Keegan writes: Bruce Shand, among his many talents, was a gifted writer of style and erudition. His memoir of his service in the Second World War is a brilliant picture of the experience of a regular cavalry officer in the campaign of 1940 and in the Western Desert.
It is also extremely funny, as Bruce so effortlessly was. As a convalescent in 1940, he was sent to a rest home for officers in the south of France run by a rich Englishwoman, one of whose companions was the widow of Marshal Joffre.
She kept a small dog called Chamberlain and took great pleasure in hearing the British nationals ordering it about - "Viens ici Chamberlain. Ne fais pas ça Chamberlain."
Bruce enjoyed the joke. So did all who heard his imitation. How greatly his friends will miss him.
***
On emerging from the sick bay he found that General Eisenhower had absolved officers from the duty of escaping because the Germans were unlikely to respect the rules of war. Shand took on such responsiblities as laundry officer and taking down BBC radio broadcasts. The camp was short of food in the later months of the war, but Shand received monthly parcels of books sent out from a shop in Piccadilly, and was able to devote several hours a day to reading history and biography as well as Thackeray and Trollope, for whom he developed a lifelong affection.
As the Allied forces approached in March 1945, Shand and his comrades were moved out of the castle and were marched for two days. Their guards, however, were elderly and tired easily, and he escaped from the column. He hid in woods for two days and nights, "dodging the hair-trigger adolescents of the Hitler Youth", as he said afterwards, until joining up with the American forces.
After being debriefed in Paris he flew back to England, where, in 1946, he married Rosalind Cubitt, the daughter of the 3rd Lord Ashcombe and a descendant of Thomas Cubitt, the builder of Mayfair and Belgravia and Bloomsbury; she was also (as their daughter Camilla was to be reminded, at least by newspapers) the granddaughter of Alice Keppel, mistress of King Edward VII.
(continued from previous thread)
***
Like many young men just out of the Army, Shand took some time to find a suitable job, working first for an educational films company then going into the wine business. With a friend, he first took over Block, Grey and Block in South Audley Street, a firm of old-fashioned wine merchants which supplied Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The firm eventually ran into difficulties, and he joined Ellis, Son and Vidler, of Hastings and London, with which he remained until his retirement.
In time he had a house in Kensington and another at the Sussex village of Plumpton, close to the racecourse, where he and his wife brought up their son, Mark, and two daughters, Camilla and Annabel. This gave him plenty of opportunity to indulge his passion for hunting.
As joint master of the Southdown Hunt in the early 1970s he was driven to declare that some of the people who went out with the hounds were distinctly unkempt. "Nobody can be expected to have a vast wardrobe by Christian Dior, but if they can afford to buy a horse they can afford to keep it and themselves clean. It's offensive to the farmers, you know. One or two have said to me: 'We welcome the hunt, major, but can't you tell some of those blighters to be less scruffy'."
At the same Shand served as Vice Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex and worked his way up the Queen's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard to become Clerk of the Cheque. It was a career, he joked, that involved dressing as if to fight the battle of Waterloo.
In his latter years Bruce Shand devoted much of his energy to nursing his wife; she died of the bone-wasting disease osteoporosis in 1994. He also produced Previous Engagements, a slim volume of war memoirs spiced with shafts of humour, and reviewed military books for Country Life.
Sir John Keegan writes: Bruce Shand, among his many talents, was a gifted writer of style and erudition. His memoir of his service in the Second World War is a brilliant picture of the experience of a regular cavalry officer in the campaign of 1940 and in the Western Desert.
It is also extremely funny, as Bruce so effortlessly was. As a convalescent in 1940, he was sent to a rest home for officers in the south of France run by a rich Englishwoman, one of whose companions was the widow of Marshal Joffre.
She kept a small dog called Chamberlain and took great pleasure in hearing the British nationals ordering it about - "Viens ici Chamberlain. Ne fais pas ça Chamberlain."
Bruce enjoyed the joke. So did all who heard his imitation. How greatly his friends will miss him.