This year, on June 6, we will be able to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

Through its Heroes Return 2 programme, the Big Lottery Fund is again generously enabling veterans to revisit the places where they saw action.

And those old comrades intent on going to Normandy for the official ceremonies will indeed be heroes.

The youngest will be nearing 90 and no longer have the vigour with which they stormed the beaches in 1944.

And a new variety of war – that on terror – entailing rigorous security with unavoidable checks and delays will make the return even more arduous.

But it will be the final roll call: the Normandy Veterans Association is disbanding. And the old warriors go not to parade their pride as overlords (Overlord was the codename of the operation), they go because, above all else, it is the dead and their sacrifice they want to commemorate – to reflect sadly on all that unlived life, the love unconsummated, the talent unrealised, the promise unfulfilled.

After 70 years most, if not all, are able to forgive the enemies they faced and include them in their thoughts and prayers.

No one fought better or more bravely than the Germans, obeying the mad, merciless command to defend to the death every inch of ground, futile as it proved.

And is there perhaps a lesson to be learned that what was twice vainly tried for by war – a dominant place in Europe – has been attained by peace?

Tony Atcherley, Church Place, Brighton