Whilst on war, the picture to the left shows my sprightly eighty-seven year-old father-in-law saluting his old regiment at Bastogne on 1 October this year. The occasion was the dissolution of the First (Belgian) Field Artillery Regiment, to which, as an ardent young man, he had once belonged. In fact, my father-in-law fought in the Piron Brigade, composed of Belgian volunteers, and absorbed into the Regiment after the war. The surviving members of the Brigade marched before the Regiment, and then the Regiment marched before them before its final dissolution. The soldiers my father-in-law is saluting in the picture have seen active service in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon. He saw the Normandy landings and the push east. Ever since, he has been a militant supporter of European integration. It is no coincidence.