A company of infantry snapped smartly to attention. As bugles rang out, the French Tricolour and battle standards were lowered in salute. The haunting bugle calls echoed through the streets of the small town of 5,500, reverberating off the thick walls of the towering fortress at its centre, built by the greatest of military architects, Vauban, to defend this strategic crossroads in the northern Vosges Mountains. We sang the glorious Marseillaise.

France was observing Victory in Europe Day. My friend of 40 years, Walter Niendorff, and I were on our semi-annual exploration of the magnificent forts of the Maginot Line. That afternoon, we had met two elderly gentlemen in their mid-70s who were clearly Americans. One, I noted with interest, wore a baseball hat emblazoned with "Sons of Bitche."

Bill Glazier and Bob Heller explained they were veterans of the US 100th Infantry Division. They had come to France to prepare for next year's visit to Bitche by the unit's World War II veterans and relatives.

Bill was a chaplain, Bob had been a combat engineer. After fighting its way up the Rhone Valley, the 100th Div. had liberated Bitche, beginning in December 1944, from the Germans. The next day, these two modest, soft-spoken vets took us around Bitche, describing events that had occurred from Jan. 1-7, 1945 during the last desperate German offensive of the war, Operation Nordwind. Three German divisions, led by the 17th Panzer Grenadiers, sought to encircle the 100th. After three days of fierce fighting, the Germans were finally repulsed and driven north of Bitche.

"We would have destroyed Bitche with our artillery," observed Bill, "but the German garrison commander really liked the town and withdrew so we wouldn't have to level it."

Bob showed us photos of himself - at 20 - in the woods before Bitche. "We fired a few rounds from our big siege guns at the fortress, but the shells just bounced off."

Vauban must have been pleased.

Bill took us outside town and showed where he had manned an anti-tank gun, and the casemate it had fired against. We went down to the entrance of the Maginot Line's mighty Fort Schiesseck - "the monster" as GIs called it - that looks down on Bitche.

Bill told us a remarkable tale of a fellow soldier who managed to get into the fort's entrance, then held it against German attacks until he was finally forced to surrender. A single American defending a French fort against the Germans - such are the odd fortunes of war. With equal irony, the French Maginot forts proved an enormous obstacle, when defended by the Germans, to the advancing Americans and French forces, holding up Gen. George Patton for three months before Metz and Thionville.

"I've asked the French Army to clear the top of Schiesseck of mines before our group comes over next year," Bill said. "The fort is still littered with unexploded shells and mines, including those German 'Bouncing Betties' (which jump up from the ground and explode at shoulder height)."

Walter and I looked at each other: that morning, we had crawled all over the dense brush and rusted barbed wire atop the fort, using up 10 of our nine lives.

Meeting Bill and Bob was a unique experience. I've been a soldier and covered many wars, but this was the first time I'd been with old soldiers in the town they had liberated. As Churchill noted, "You will never know war until you fight Germans." Bob and Bill spoke of their former foes with respect: the soldiers of a dying, wrecked Germany had fought to the last with dauntless courage.

Bob and Bill called Bitche "our town." Indeed it was, purchased with the blood of so many men of the Century Division, 916 of whom died in France. The townspeople looked on Bill and Bob with affection, awe, and admiration. Bill graciously returned the compliment by recalling Gen. "Black Jack" Pershing's immortal words on landing with his American troops in France in 1917: "Lafayette, we are here." The 100th had come to France not only to fight Nazism but to help repay the nation's debt to France for its decisive help in America's war of independence.

Bill and Bob reminded me of what it was about Americans and Canadians that earned so much respect in postwar Europe. They were not triumphant conquerors, but reluctant citizen-soldiers who had crossed the Atlantic to battle a truly evil force. They fought well, but without martial passion, and as humanely as one can do in a savage war. They risked their lives to liberate France, Belgium and Holland, then returned home.

Here in North America we have almost forgotten these quiet heroes, but France still remembers and honours them.