Damn Those French, Eh?

Eight years ago, a French couple founded an organization that adopts graves of American servicemen who died during the Normandy invasion of World War II. The volunteer group encourages French families to lay flowers on the graves when the Americans' own families can't do it.

[...]

MarieTherese La Vieille, who founded the organization eight years ago with her husband, says its important that each soldier be remembered when their own families cant come anymore.

"When we joined, we promised to visit the grave once a year and to lay flowers on the grave," she says. "Sometimes people take flowers from their own gardens. And they say it is like a son, like a cousin, like a brother. It is a member of the family."

This year dozens of members of Les Fleurs de la Memoire have shown up at Colleville-sur-Mer for the annual Memorial Day ceremony, which begins with a flyover by U.S. fighter jets in the missing-man formation.

A French priest recites the Lord's Prayer, then a rabbi chants the Kadish. And a French military band plays the "Star-Spangled Banner."

[...]

But behind the grand ceremony, a simple tribute unfolds at the back of the cemetery. Jean Michel Miette, 50, kneels in front of the grave of [...] Pvt. 1st Class Walter C. Malcolm. Miette is the one who adopted Malcolm's grave and he has come from Paris this morning to honor him.

[...]

"With enormous emotion in my heart, I want to say thank you, Walter," Miette says. "I will never forget you or your heroic compatriots."

  NPR