A few weeks ago, I found myself standing on a windswept beach in Normandy, with two of our region's veterans, whose eyes were seeing more than mine.

Where I saw gentle breakers crashing against the shore, they saw bodies floating face down in a sea turned red with blood. Where I saw a promenade, filled with happy French families, they saw a Nazi gun emplacement, with rapid machine gun fire cutting a swathe through their friends as they battled their way up the beach.

They were there to witness the horrors of D-Day. They are our final bridge to the past.

Some people seem to have questioned the importance of marking the 65th anniversary of D-Day in recent weeks.

After all, since when was 65 years a significant anniversary of anything?

But after a few days spent travelling through Normandy with two of the men who served there on D-Day and in the hard-fought weeks after the initial landings, remembering these soldiers seems more important to me than ever.

During my time in Normandy, my companions, Michael Brennan, 83, from Bristol, and Albert Williams, 87, from Calne, showed me the places where they had put their lives on the line in the fight to eradicate Nazism from Europe.

We rediscovered the graves of their fallen comrades – friends whose lives had been snuffed out before they had even reached the age of 20 – those who but for a twist of fortune, might have lived the rich and varied lives that both Albert and Michael had enjoyed in the ensuing years.

Their brave action was the price that needed to be paid in order to right the failings that had been poisoning western civilisation since the end of World War I.

This is why it is so important to learn from the past – from D-Day, and all the other battles across the world where men gave their lives in order that we might be free of tyranny.

On the whole we did learn. After the end of the war, we worked hard to heal Europe. The same attitude of healing needs to persist today, and there is great promise for the future in President Obama's latest efforts to heal the great rift of today, between the US and the Islamic world.

Because the best kind of world, would be one where we never again have to see the kind of selfless heroism that the D-Day veterans showed all those years ago.