Rose started his academic career at The
Queen's College, Oxford. As Rose began his position as a tutor in music, organist of The Queen's College, Oxford, and conductor of the Eglesfield Music Society, the Second World War was declared. With the war having just begun, Rose married his fiancée,
Molly Marshall, at Christmas 1939.
Military service Rose volunteered and was seen by an army selection board and
called up in September 1940, after which he underwent officer training. He was commissioned as a
second lieutenant in
2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry on 26 January 1941. He saw action in the North African and Italian campaigns as a "
Desert Rat" with the
4th County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), and took part in the
Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. A week later, Molly was informed that Bernard has been killed in action; in fact he had been captured on 13 June 1944 during the
Battle of Villers-Bocage in Normandy, as she later learned. Bernard spent the remainder of the war at
Oflag 79, a German POW camp near Brunswick, Lower Saxony, until the
Ninth United States Army released him and his colleagues on 12 April 1945. He left the army with the rank of
captain. Molly Rose also saw service during the war, piloting
Spitfires,
Wellington bombers,
Hawker Typhoon and
Tempest fighter-bombers in the
Air Transport Auxiliary. In 1952, Rose conducted the premiere of
An Oxford Elegy by
Ralph Vaughan Williams. Rose introduced Kenneth Leighton to the composer
Gerald Finzi in the late 1940s, and the two developed a close friendship and artistic association. After Finzi's death, Leighton dedicated his
Veris Gratia Suite, Op. 9 to his friend, and the choral version was conducted in Oxford by Bernard Rose in 1956. Rose served as Vice-President of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1975, and was an Emeritus Fellow 1981–1996. He was president of the
Royal College of Organists from 1974 to 1976. ==Honours==