During the war my Grandfather and four of his friends were cut off from their group and got stuck behind enemy lines. They hid in the basement of a bombed out farmhouse that was surrounded by enemy troops. Their food ran out quickly and they had to subsist for nearly a month on what they could find in a little wine cellar in that basement. Life seemed so fragile. They made a pact that, should any of them reach their fiftieth birthday (a ripe old age I'm sure in the eyes of five guys in their late teens and early twenties!), they would celebrate for all five.
Some 30 years later my Grandpa had a party... the others didn't make it.
Lest we forget.
