As it was when I chatted with Havelock North man Geoff Bibby yesterday for a story about his travelling to London next month to attend the unveiling of a memorial to RAF Bomber Command.
I asked Geoff where he had been crewed up - where he got to meet the rest of the seven-man Lancaster bomber crew he was to serve with over flak-smeared European skies.
"Oh," he said as he struggled to remember.
"Hang on," he said as he reached for the phone.
He called his mate Ian Petrie, who lives in Auckland.
Ian was the bomb-aimer aboard their Lancaster, and he and Geoff are the last two left of that crew.
"Ah yes," he said when Ian told him it was at Husbands Bosworth airfield, just outside Leicester.
"That was it."
But it was a momentary lapse, as Geoff was in chirpy good form, sharp of wit and knowledge, and belying his 90 years.
He spoke, as many veterans have spoken to me in the past, about losing good friends.
There one day, gone the next.
Yet those who remained to carry on the fight took it stoically - only in the quiet moments, when they were alone with their thoughts, did the lump in the throat emerge.
"But we supported each other. We were all there for each other," Geoff said.
"We flew together and we played together. I had a girlfriend - an English lass. I'd come back and we'd make plans for next Friday ... never thought about not coming back."
These men and these women who put the most precious thing in life on the line, life itself, are remarkable people to talk to.
I have never come across a veteran I could say was guilty of "line shooting" - talking up their exploits.
There is an openness and acceptance that what they did was at times extraordinary, but it is always draped in modesty.
Some tales I have heard have had me just sitting there bewildered at what to ask next.
"It was just the way things were," many simply say.
Veterans are walking memories, and reminders that freedom came with a price because many of the mates they shared often brief time with, mates of just 21 and 22, never came home.
The Veterans Affairs' office decision to fund the 32 veterans on this memorable journey was a very sound one.
When I left Geoff's house I shook his hand and wished him well for the long flights to London.
With a slightly mischievous laugh he said: "Oh, and thank you for helping pay for it."
"Money very well spent," I replied.
