Nightfly,
Please pass on my heartfelt thanks as well.
I was not born in 1944, butlike the DF, my parents taught me about the war and the liberation of France. I was only a child when my father explained me how Americans had come to our rescue, and how outrageous it was that the only "thank you" they got at that time was "US go home". I grew up learning to love the country to which we owe so much. As an adult I got the opportunity to travel to the United States and even lived there for three years - the three happiest years in my life! Life called me back in France and I have felt homesick ever since I returned.
You are lucky; you can rightly be proud of your country, of its past and its present. It is a feeling I will never experience - well, maybe someday, if I manage to go back to the right side of the Atlantic...
Again thank you; words are not enough to express my gratitude and my admiration, we will always be in your debt and I really wish I could do something to repay only a little of it.