FILE - This photograph is believed to show E Company, 16th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, participating in the first wave of assaults during D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. (Chief Photographer's Mate Robert M. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard via AP, File)

Francis Dalton never forgot the rustle of the foliage on the other side of that jungle wall — or what happened next.

His senses were thrumming like a live electrical wire. He was as jittery as a cat, and as laser-focused as only a grizzled veteran who was already wounded twice in war, could be.

That rustling.

He heard it, and went stock-still. Something or somebody was in there — and when the Japanese soldier emerged, he, too, did the same.

Two young men, locked in the amber of the moment: One, hailing from Maidsville in the hills of north-central West Virginia, who had felt compelled to enlist after Pearl Harbor. The other, a conscript to the cause of imperial Japan who had been defined by a code of honor and duty that had existed for a millennium.

Perhaps the latter is why it was so extraordinary, as to what happened next.

The Japanese soldier bowed — and then surrendered.

Fighting the fight

In Europe, Friday marks the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the launch of the Allied offensive into France from the beaches of Normandy.

By now, the events of June 6, 1944, have morphed from grainy newsreel footage rarely seen these days to a now-classic film by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, all the while arranging themselves into a sepia-toned collage of composite memory, in a twilight unspooling.

More than 16 million Americans served in World War II, but according to numbers maintained by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, only a little more than 65,000 remain — roughly the number of a standing-room only crowd at Milan Puskar Stadium — with the last of those veterans expected to be seen in the late 2030s.

Dalton is among the 196 veterans of World War II still alive in the Mountain State as of last year, the museum said.

He was on the other side of the world in the Pacific Theater while Allied Forces slogged through the chop of ocean and machine gun fire to get a foothold on the beaches of Normandy that morning 81 years ago.

Francis Dalton, 103, lands in Washington, D.C., following his Honor Flight from Clarksburg to visit the national World War II Memorial in September. (File Photo)

War stories (not)

These days, Dalton has only just recently entered the process of transitioning to a nursing facility at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg.

“I can’t imagine what those guys went through,” stepdaughter Terry Bailes said.

Dalton, as said, had been wounded twice, doing his work with the 65th Brigade Engineer Battalion, building bridges and carving out roads, while bullets whizzed over his head.

A buddy was killed right in front of him, when their armored bulldozer suddenly turned into a slow-moving target during one such skirmish. Like many soldiers serving in jungle climes, he also came down with malaria.

It took him a while to start talking about the war, but when he did, one of the first memories coming forth was that of the soldier, saying farewell to the fighting.

His recollection was as sharp as the ambient drop of the needle on the grooves of a Glenn Miller record in a PX jukebox — but he didn’t tell it as a “war story,” his stepdaughter marveled.

In fact, she said, he talked about how he never felt more scared or vulnerable, in that instant.

Dalton did join up after Dec. 7 and he did serve in the Pacific. He was steaming across that ocean, in fact, when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He was honorably discharged a month later.

Even with his experiences, he never regarded the Japanese on the ground as “the enemy” — despite a life so defined by the war he had marched off to just out of his teens.

The encounter with the soldier who surrendered most certainly reinforced that, he said.

“We were all the same,” Dalton said. “Young, and following orders.”