So it was that, set against the honorable record, our 79th Infantry Division veterans tour got underway and the process of passing on the memories and military heritage from one generation to another began. My first inkling that the veterans' proud history during World War Two has already been secured occurred almost as soon as we had arrived in Paris.

Sitting outside a small sidewalk café with veterans' leader Les Brantingham, a former PFC in the 315th Infantry Regt, a young man quietly approached him, (having recognized his Vets baseball cap), and unselfconsciously thanked Les and all his comrades for all that they had done on America's behalf. A product of the Citadel Military School of South Carolina 24-year old Drew Farmer, vacationing in Paris, was typical of the breed of young American men who have grown-up educated as to the sacrifices of his forebears.

I was deeply impressed by the sincerity of this young man and Les's eyes twinkled with the knowledge that all had not been forgotten in the new millennium. However just as the mood of the evening was about to turn sentimental, a little French guy in a frog hat walked by, chatting to all and sundry as he went on his way. I nudged Les and ventured, "you guys fought a war so free men across Europe could dress up like frogs" he just roared with laughter. This brief meeting of young and old in a foreign city, however seemed to perfectly illustrate the counter-balance of sincerity and emotion of what we were about to encounter with the frivolity and laughter that life has a habit of offering even in our saddest moments.

Our tour party, I soon discovered, comprised a wonderful cross-section of all that is good about America; from veterans aged 84 to grandchildren aged 14, sons accompanying fathers, daughters whose fathers were sadly no longer with us and veterans' widows who had made the huge emotional decision to come to France.

Each one had a special reason for making this emotional pilgrimage. Some veterans have longed to revisit places of their youth, where great friendships were forged in the heat of battle, and where boys were turned into men so far away from home in foreign lands, all of which would have a massive effect on their young lives. For these veterans such a trip was a chance to relive former glories and meet with the people who were once so important to them.

Other veterans have never uttered a word about their war-time experiences, keeping their own counsel on the years of life-or-death struggles in the Bocage country around the small French villages and the hand-to-hand fighting from Cherbourg to Rittershoffen. Only their wives, with all the intuitiveness that women possess, understood that their men-folk had a long-hidden and suppressed desire to go back just one more time. A chance to put their past battles into some sort of context and try to rationalize a major part of their earlier life as they now reach the autumn of their lives.