Camilla's Sarkozy meet

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 organisers said: 'The kind of dignified ceremony which has taken place in Paris for decades would have been perfectly appropriate.'