Tory Historian was browsing through the Defense Visual Information Center's photographic archives - all freely available for use by the public - and came across this remarkable and moving picture.
This was taken on May 13, 1945. The war in Europe had finished but the war in the Far East was still raging.
The picture is that of the bombed out Coventry Cathedral where wounded US troops from nearby hospitals were attending a Mother's Day service.
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The raw, real emotions experienced in war time allow people to participate in time hallowed, traditional ceremonies without fearing accusations of sentimentality. But try telling their children that.
Not just ceremonies. Films, songs and poems of wartime have, in the past, tended to be unaffectedly sentimental. Unfortunately, this no longer seems to be the case with film makers and song writers having all too often a separate political agenda.
I once read a definition of sentimentality as "unearned emotion". Perhaps what is right for people who have earned the emotion, really does become sentimentality with succeeding generations.