Here is our farmhouse group, from left to right: me; my brother, Tim (his wife, Stephanie, is not in the picture); my wife, Linda; her mother, Elaine Simon; my cousin's wife, Noel Bundy; and my cousin, Emory Bundy. Emory has never forgotten a visit from my father in 1943 just before going overseas, when Emory was about eight years old. My father had accompanied the body of his dear friend, George Palmer, killed in a training accident, back to Seattle. The few days that the young boy and the gentle fighter pilot spent together left an indelible impression on my cousin.

My mother stayed at a lovely inn nearby in Hambye, where we picked her up every day, and so is not in this shot.

Here in the coastal city of Granville, near Remy's home, Remy and my mother stand next to a German gun, blown-up by the German soldiers as they retreated before the Allied advance. Remy was a boy in 1944 and befriended the American pilots who were based in Normandy after the invasion. He knows where every American plane fell in Normandy and frequently hosts visiting American pilots and their families. His book, "The Turbulent Norman Sky," just published at the time of our visit, is his account of Ninth Air Force pilots in Normandy. Its first printing has sold out and a second edition is being printed.

Remy served us wine in his apartment overlooking the sea. It was a sad occasion too, because some of us remembered our visit a year earlier, when we had sat in the same room eating a meal prepared for us by Francoise, Remy's beloved wife, who, unbelieveably, had died very unexpectedly of cancer in the time since our visit. Linda and I went with Remy to her grave in a small nearby cemetery where his parents and grandparents are buried. He is beginning to emerge a little from the darkness of her loss, but it is very difficult. Her painting of my father's P-47, "Damon's Demon," graces the cover of Remy's book. Remy Chuinard is a dear and beautiful friend, a man of marvelous humor and unbounded generosity.

This is the plaque that is mounted on a block of granite in central Normandy. A few days after the ceremony we returned to the little roadside "pocket park." In the quiet, breezy country setting it was hard to picture the flames of battle and death that engulfed the town 55 years before, a conflagration that indirectly caused us to be standing there together, remembering (or imagining) the man whose modest self-portrait smiled up at us.

The End