He also came to honor a generation.

This is the generation that sacrificed, fought, died and waited in combat for five years, then sent its youngest and bravest men to the Normandy beaches and fought under machine-gun fire and artillery blasts to launch the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.

It’s also a generation that’s rapidly being left behind in history, with the youngest D-Day veteran now approaching his 100th birthday. It’s a reality King knows firsthand, having lost his mother and father, both World War II veterans, in the past three years.

So on Thursday, Charles, perhaps for the last time, said thank you to veterans and their missing comrades during a ceremony at the newly built British Normandy Memorial, located near the beaches where Britain’s troops landed 80 years ago.

He said that although the number of living veterans is dwindling, “our responsibility to remember what they stood for and what they achieved for all of us can never diminish.”

“Eighty years ago on D-Day, 6 June 1944, our country – and the people who stood with it – faced what my grandfather, King George VI, described as the ultimate test,” Charles said. “How fortunate we, and the whole free world, were that a generation of men and women from the United Kingdom and other Allied nations did not lose courage when the time came to face that test.”

The British ceremony featured performances from singers including Tom Jones, as well as testimonies from D-Day veterans. Queen Camilla was seen wiping away tears when actor Martin Freeman read out memories from 99-year-old Joe Mines, in which he said “I was 19 when I landed, but I was still a boy.”

Charles, 75, ignored his recent cancer diagnosis to attend a ceremony for British veterans, although he decided to skip the major international ceremony held just miles away. Prince William, heir to the throne, will replace the king at that event near Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, and will join heads of state and veterans from around the world to mark the anniversary.

The king is slowly returning to public duties after spending three months in isolation following his cancer diagnosis. Buckingham Palace said last month that doctors are encouraged by his progress, but Charles is still receiving treatment and his schedule will be adjusted as needed to improve his health.

Because of the limited time, it is no surprise that King chose to focus on the sacrifices of British soldiers.

As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the king is a symbol of the nation and a unifying force for the military, above party politics.

Charles also has a deep personal connection to the World War II generation, having spent five years in the Royal Navy. His father, Prince Philip, served in the Navy throughout the war, and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, trained as a military driver and mechanic during the final months of the conflict. Queen Camilla’s father served in the army and was twice awarded the Military Cross, Britain’s third-highest military honor.

“The men and women who took part in D-Day were not fighting for the government of the day, they were fighting for the crown,” said Michael Cole, a former BBC royal correspondent who first covered Charles more than 50 years ago.

“The soldiers swear their loyalty to the king. That’s the way it is. And that’s the way it is in this country. So it’s very, very important that the king attends the D-Day services.”

The D-Day landings had been a dream of Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, ever since the US entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

They finally became a reality on June 6, 1944, when nearly 160,000 Allied troops from the U.S., Britain, Canada and nine other nations landed in Normandy. At least 4,414 people were killed and another 5,900 were reported missing or wounded as Allied forces broke through the Nazis’ heavily fortified “Atlantic Wall” to gain a foothold in northern Europe.

By the end of August more than 2 million people had crossed the English Channel and were marching toward Berlin, which ended with Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945.

The king and French President Emmanuel Macron led dignitaries in laying wreaths at the British Normandy Memorial. It is located outside the town of Ver-sur-Mer opposite Gold Beach, one of three beaches where British troops landed on D-Day. About 62,000 British troops landed that day, or 40% of the total invasion force.

The names of all 22,442 soldiers who died under British command during the massive Battle of Normandy are engraved on the memorial’s limestone columns. For the 80th anniversary events, 1,475 larger-than-life black silhouettes have been placed around the memorial to represent the British soldiers who died on D-Day.

Britain’s monarchs have taken a leading role in honoring the country’s war dead since Charles’s great-grandfather King George V buried an unknown World War I soldier at Westminster Abbey in 1920.

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