We are delighted to share a moving speech that guest Brian Wolf, who joined us on our D-Day to the Rhine Tour, gave at the farewell lunch. Brian was one of four teenagers who traveled together on the tour earlier this year.

As historian Rick Beyer said, “I had invited everyone on the trip to give remarks. One of the boys, Brian Wolf, who until then had not spoken a great deal, got up and gave a speech he had written while the rest of us were eating. I was blown away.” So are we.

Here is Brian’s speech, in its entirety.

“Take a look around. What’s the average age of those here? 60, 70? I believe those of us willing to remember are a dying breed. Like the first Great War, the memory of what happened here will fade into nothing but legend. Stuck in Hollywood stereotypes on a silver screen, in dusty books and articles in magazines. I don’t know if my generation will really ever care, as the history books we learn from get larger, the war will get much smaller. Stories like the Ghost Army, or the Monuments Men, gone not with a bang, but with a whimper.

“I’ve learned so many small facts, and the story of individuals. The people that made the war, the people we’ve spent this week remembering. Everybody on a stage, everybody in the ground, Ally or Axis, had a story and that’s why we’re here. I wouldn’t have learned these things if not for this tour, all these little pieces of the great puzzle.

This tour while not life-changing, was eye-opening. Words on pages and the voices on flickering screens will never do justice to that scale. Only being there in person does, only staring down the bluffs of Omaha does, only a fast-paced, history-filled tour does.

And so, I would like to thank Madeline, who lights up the room by just being there, even if she’s a chatterbox it’s always a story worth listening too. Ramone, who regularly commits superhuman acts of skill as he carries us to and fro. And Rick, who’s memoir I hope becomes a best seller, because anyone who manages to get a group of eleven hundred almost unknown soldiers a Congressional Gold medal couldn’t have lived a boring life.

And the rest of you, for making this tour as entertaining as it was: Thank You.”