A quiet lesson about the men of D-Day

It was a small, unscripted moment at Cantigny Park, easy to miss if you didn't happen to be standing in just the right place.

It came late Saturday morning, during the observance of the 65th anniversary of D-Day, and it told you all you needed to know about the troops who stormed the sands of Normandy into the teeth of the German war machine that sat waiting, determined to slaughter them on the beaches and drive their remnants back into the English Channel.

It told you all you needed to know about these sons of the Great Depression who somehow drove through the German defenses on June 6, 1944, and then across Europe and into Berlin.

Defeat?

Not these men.

Not that day.

The observance had started some time earlier in front of the Wheaton museum's newly acquired Higgins boat, the kind of landing craft that had delivered many of them to bloody beaches with code names like Omaha and Utah.

The colors had been posted. The national anthem had been sung. The speeches had been delivered.

Now the 90 or so D-Day veterans are being called, one by one, to the stage. First those who spend their days in wheelchairs are brought to the front of the wooden platform. Then the others, their names read alphabetically, make their way forward.

They are gray now, of course, and while some are remarkably spry, most are glad to accept the arms of volunteers who walk with them to the foot of the stage and assist them up the small flight of stairs.

They are standing there on this cool, overcast June morning, watching as each of their comrades slowly makes his way to join them.

About midway through - maybe around the Ms - a couple volunteers get the totally logical idea that perhaps it would be nice to provide the honorees - all in their 80s or 90s - with some seats to rest their weary bones.

They approach the side of the stage and hand two folding chairs up to a volunteer. She disappears into the sea of vets and returns a minute later, still carrying the chairs.

She hands them back down.

"They don't want them," she says.

There is a moment's confusion. Nobody seems exactly sure what to do. Then the retired Army general standing at the corner of the wooden platform growls in the way even one who has never served imagines generals growl.

"They don't want them," he says.

And so the veterans of D-Day remain standing until the last of their buddies has climbed the stairs to stand beside them.

They remain standing as the applause from the crowd washes over them.

They are still standing as the ceremony ends and the onlookers drift away.

Accept the simple comfort of a chair when there is still a single name to be called, when there is still a single buddy out there?

Not these men.

Not this day.