PARIS, France -- Their hair white and eyes dimmed, 40 allied and German war aces of World War I gathered Wednesday beneath the Arch of Triumph to celebrate Armistice Day and to recall the legendary duels they once fought over the skies of Europe.
The aces came from Germany, Hungary, Britain, Italy, France, the United States and Canada and met the men they battled with 63 years ago in 'the war to end all wars.'
At the Arch of Triumph, the aces chatted quietly among themselves and then watched as President Francois Mitterrand placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to remember the 1,357,000 French soldiers who died during World War I.
Then the veterans returned in the evening -- blankets covering their limbs from the cold -- for another ceremony in which President Mitterrand relit the eternal flame burning near the tomb.
'We Americans were fighting for our country but physically fighting for France,' Douglas Campbell, the United States' first World War I ace, said as he surveyed a crowd of 50,000 lining the Champs Elysee.
'So this ceremony gets us in the heart,' he said emotionally, pointing to his heart.
Leaning on his crutches, his white hair tucked beneath his hat, Campbell said he downed his first German plane in May 1918.
French ace Fernand Chavannds, a chipper 85 in a navy blue suit, said he shot down 12 enemy planes.
Asked if he spoke with his one-time enemies, the German aces, Chavannds said with a smile, 'I did not speak to them because I've forgotten my German language.'
In the evening 500 French veterans of World Wars I and II, many wearing rows of medals, marched up the Champs Elysee carrying torches to the flame-lighting ceremony.
A mammoth French tricolor flag snapped in the wind inside the arch and on each side gleamed silver signs saying '1914-18.'
Mitterrand also placed wreaths on the statue of Georges Clemenceau, the French president in 1918 who negotiated the Treaty of Versailles after the war, and at the tomb of Marshall Joseph Joffre, who won the battle of the Marne River against the Germans in September 1914.
Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy presided at ceremonies in Compiegne, in northern France, in an old railway car. It was the site of the armistice signing on Nov. 11, 1918, at 11 a.m., that ended 52 months of war.
