Most World War II veterans never lived to see it, but 83-year-old Navy veteran Richard Craig is one of the lucky ones.

Sixty-three years after the conflict's end, he's finally arrived at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

It's a drizzly autumn day and Mr. Craig is slowly making his way around the memorial's circular plaza. A veteran of the battle of Okinawa and the Philippines, his thoughts turn to the war -- and to those he left behind.

"I saw kamikazes dive into troop ships," he says. "I knew a man from Augusta who rode on the handlebars of my bicycle everyday -- he was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. All these things go through your mind."

Suddenly he feels a tug on his left hand. He looks down and finds a small boy looking up at him. He's wearing a flashy Hawaiian-style shirt and has closely cropped blond hair.

"What's your name?" Mr. Craig asks.

"Macon," the boy says.

"Where are you from?"

"Oklahoma."

Mr. Craig puts his arm around the boy's shoulders. They talk for a few moments before walking their separate ways. Later, Mr. Craig says the brief encounter is one of the highlights of the trip.

"I felt he had picked me out to come up and say thank you and just touch someone who had been in World War II," Mr. Craig says. "I felt, at that time, maybe I was his hero. It made me feel good."

Mr. Craig and 20 other World War II veterans from the Augusta area are visiting the memorial free of charge, courtesy of the Vets To Washington Project.

The project started in 2004, when Doug Hastings, a no-nonsense 62-year-old veteran of four tours of duty in Vietnam, realized his boss, a frail 79-year-old World War II veteran, might not live long enough to see the newly constructed memorial. Mr. Hastings decided to check out the memorial himself and take some photos to bring to his boss.

While visiting the memorial, Mr. Hastings spoke to several World War II veterans.

"I was struck by how every one of them felt that they were there not for themselves, but for the ones that didn't come back," Mr. Hastings said. "It was pretty common to hear the comment, 'I'm so glad I got to see this before I die, because I needed to come here for them.' "

But many World War II veterans aren't making the trip. The memorial was built nearly 60 years after the end of the war, and most never lived to see it constructed. For the rest, time is running out. They are dying at a rate of nearly 1,700 per day. Many are too frail to make the trip. Others are retired and living on fixed incomes.

"It's important for us to remember World War II veterans," Mr. Hastings said, "because it's the last time in the history of this country that a generation didn't say, 'Why should I step up?' They stepped up. They knew when they went it was for the duration. They didn't fight to come home; they didn't fight authority; they didn't resent their country. As I've heard many of them say, 'We had a job to do and we did the job.' They didn't leave it undone for somebody else to finish. They did it."

After visiting the memorial, Mr. Hastings returned to Augusta and decided to organize a bus trip for a few local veterans.

He made some calls and lined up donors. He collected enough money to take 22 vets to Washington at no charge. He also convinced his boss to go, despite his fragile health.

Mr. Hastings intended to do just one trip.

"Halfway through the trip, both he and I knew we would never get away with just doing one," Mr. Hastings said. "It doesn't take but one trip for you to realize that there's a lot more of them out there that need to see this."

But it wasn't just the veterans who were touched by visiting the memorial.

"I wasn't really prepared for the emotional experience that I would undergo and the impact it would have on me," Mr. Hastings said.

With that, the Vets to Washington Project was born.

Going to Washington

Funded entirely by private donations, the program allows World War II veterans and one guest to travel to Washington by bus, visit the various memorials and stay at a hotel -- free. Veterans pay only for meals. Vietnam and Korean War veterans can go, too, if space is available, but priority is given to the World War II veterans.

Income makes no difference -- all vets ride free.

"Nobody asked them whether they had money when they took them to fight the war," Mr. Hastings said. "I'm not going to ask them."

Four years later, the seventh busload of vets has arrived at the memorial. The average age is 87 -- the oldest is 93. Also on board are two Korean War veterans and two Vietnam veterans. One veteran, Charles Sidener, served in all three conflicts.

"It's even beautiful without the sun shining on it." Mr. Hastings says of the rain-soaked memorial.

Constructed in gray granite and bronze, the memorial is starkly beautiful.

It's a circular plaza surrounded by 56 granite pillars, each inscribed with the name of a state or territory. A bronze rope ties the pillars together, symbolizing the bond of the nation during wartime.

Two 43-foot-tall granite pavilions, one representing the Atlantic Theater and the other the Pacific, mark the north and south side of the plaza. Each pavilion contains four bronze columns supporting four eagles holding a victory laurel in recognition of the triumph. The memorial sits at the end of the long reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

Everyone slowly files off the bus while the driver unloads walkers and wheelchairs.

"Thank you for your service to our country!" shouts a passing bicyclist.

It's not unusual for vets to be greeted by strangers, particularly children, as Robert Jones soon discovers. The 85-year-old can't walk very fast, so he's using a wheelchair during the trip. He is surrounded by curious middle school children wanting a glimpse of a real World War II veteran. Some want to shake his hand, and a few ask to have their picture taken with him. Mr. Jones is surprised at first, but happily complies. He tells them about his days with the combat engineers building roads, bridges and airfields.

"I was shocked," he said later. "Then I realized they were very enthralled with the memorial. They're patriotic. I was very impressed."

Sharing their stories

Moments later, Mr. Hastings is walking with 85-year-old Ben Lockett near the Wall of Honor. Located at the western end of the memorial, the curved wall's 4,000 gold stars are mounted above a small reflecting pool. Each star represents 100 of the 400,000 American lives lost in the war. "Here We Mark The Price Of Freedom" is carved in granite in front of the pool.

Mr. Lockett tells about a friend he had while with the Signal Corps stationed in Kunming, China, in 1945 when he was just 22.

Sgt. Lockett and his unit spend their days maintaining 109 miles of communications wire. They're in a constant struggle to keep the Chinese locals from attaching lights to the line and causing a short. Sometimes locals steal the wire for the copper. The rest of the time he's fixing communications equipment. It's an important job, but Sgt. Lockett, and countless men like him who work in support of the war, know a Bronze Star and ticker tape parade probably won't be coming their way. Few heroes come from guys who just hang wire.

Sgt. Lockett has befriended another Signal Corps man known only as Sgt. Heager. He's quick with a joke and a smile, and Sgt. Lockett always looks forward to seeing him. The two have a lot in common -- they're roughly the same age, both are sergeants in the same battalion and do similar work, though Sgt. Heager specializes in radio while Sgt. Lockett works mostly with telephones.

On this day, though, the mood is bittersweet. After serving three years away from friends, family and the comforts of home, Sgt. Heager is scheduled to return to the U.S. the next day. Sgt. Lockett is sorry to see his friend go, but happy he'll be able to go home.

Sgt. Lockett finishes his duties for the day and returns to the battalion camp. Sgt. Heager, however, is nowhere to be found. Sgt. Lockett wonders whether he had already gone, but soon discovers his friend is dead, shot by a Chinese soldier.

Sixty-three years later, he is still haunted by his friend's death, but visiting the World War II Memorial and telling his story is cathartic.

"I will never forget what you have done for me by bringing me here," Mr. Lockett says to Mr. Hastings as the tears flow. "Never in the rest of my life will I forget this experience. I thank you."

A few feet away, 85-year-old Navy vet Posey Jacobs uses a handkerchief to dry his eyes as he, too, comes across the Wall of Honor.

"You get choked up, you know, thinking about those poor guys," he says. "My buddy, he says I'm his hero from World War II. But they were the heroes, those guys on those stars."

Mr. Jacobs was a gunner on a small, wooden mine sweeper. He likes to tell about an encounter he had with a kamikaze pilot near Okinawa, Japan, in 1945.

"I see this guy coming only about 200 feet up," he says. "He was going on by us. He wasn't going to mess with us because we were a little, small ship."

Mr. Jacobs speculates the kamikaze is headed for a nearby aircraft carrier. He decides to get the pilot's attention and shoots a burst of bullets from his 20 mm anti-aircraft machine gun. Message received; the pilot banks back for Mr. Jacobs' ship.

"I said 'Oh, come on baby!' and my (ammunition) loader said 'Don't say that! Don't say that! Let him go!' "

At that moment the pilot straightened out and was heading directly for Mr. Jacobs' ship.

"He almost had us dead to rights," Mr. Jacobs says. "I laid a row of tracers (bullets) right straight through the nose, straight through the cockpit and into the tail."

The kamikaze splashed down harmlessly nearby.

"If he had hit us, it would have been all over," he says.

Time passes quickly

After about an hour at the memorial, trip assistant Pam Lightsey says it's time to get back to the bus. The time has gone quickly. With only one day in Washington, the group is on a tight schedule. It still has to stop at the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, the Marine Iwo Jima Memorial, the Roosevelt Memorial and take a 35-minute drive to the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport.

For the veterans, the brief visit is unforgettable. Fred Ashhurst, 92, who spent the war working in military intelligence, says the trip was like a dream.

"Having lost so many of my close friends who fought in World War II," he says, "and to go with what's left to the ... memorial has just been overwhelming. It's a great climax to my life."

Mr. Sidener, 82, says the visit caused all the old emotions to come back.

"I guess it's all locked up in here and it just comes out," he says. "We were kids; we didn't have enough sense to be afraid. It just stirs up a lot of stuff -- in a very good way."

For Mr. Hastings, as the number of veterans continues to dwindle, the trip is a small victory over the unyielding march of time and mortality.

"In another five years we're not going to have this generation anymore," he says.

"We should do whatever it takes to educate every middle school child, every high school child and make sure they know where these people fought, how they fought and the sacrifices they made.

"That's something nobody should ever forget."