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The beginning of a beautiful friendship

COLOGNE, Germany - When the Philadelphia Orchestra tours Europe, certain things inevitably happen. Conductor laureate Wolfgang Sawallisch always receives either a visit at his home in Grassau, Bavaria, or a missive. (This year, due to recent medical issues, it was an 88th-birthday card.)

COLOGNE, Germany - When the Philadelphia Orchestra tours Europe, certain things inevitably happen.

Conductor laureate Wolfgang Sawallisch always receives either a visit at his home in Grassau, Bavaria, or a missive. (This year, due to recent medical issues, it was an 88th-birthday card.)

And there's always a war-buddy reunion between the orchestra's oldest performing member, Jerome Wigler, 91, and Jean-Paul Mally, 84.

The men met during the liberation of Paris in 1944. Wigler, a medic, was warming himself at a fire on a cold night and whistled the first phrase of a Beethoven string quartet. Somebody finished the phrase for him - Mally, then a 17-year-old student, fledgling flutist, and violinist.

"We had just come up from Omaha Beach," Wigler said on Wednesday. "It was terrible. There were deaths all over the place. We'd just come into Paris, and that was a relief. All of the sudden, the war seemed to stop for a moment. Many soldiers had that same feeling. And then meeting this guy, it brought a feeling of normalcy."

Said Mally, "When he whistled that tune, to hear music, to have a personal touch . . . ."

Wigler gave Mally violin lessons, and they played duets together, planting the seeds of their tradition of meeting on tour, sometimes in France, sometimes in Luxembourg, this time in Germany, since Mally has moved to Freiburg. Mally hears a concert, and they share a meal and spend time together.

This year had some differences. Wigler's wife, Gabrielle Verdin - a Belgian whom he met and married in 1945 - had recently died, so on his Monday day off, he and his son went to Liege, to visit her family's grave sites.

During that trip, Wigler struck up a conversation with a waiter, mentioning that he had been part of the liberating U.S. forces. The waiter drew a blank, confirming Wigler's suspicion that one of the most devastating wars in history is being forgotten by later generations.

Worse yet, he feels the American public is unhealthily detached from the continuing war in Afghanistan; more than ever, he feels, it's important to remember what destruction is possible.

For the moment, though, he and Mally on Wednesday enjoyed yet another of their days of what the Frenchman described as "friendship, remembrance, and the human touch. God bless America!"