Though Queen Elizabeth II has cut back on making foreign trips, the 88-year-old British monarch travelled to France for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. And it’s little wonder: she lived and lost through the Second World War and it marked her life more than many.

On a three-day state visit to France, she and her husband, Prince Philip, on Friday commemorated the landings at Sword Beach in Normandy, after having spent Thursday in Paris attending a British Embassy garden party, and laying a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.

The Queen’s parents were nearly killed in the Second World War.

Her father, King George VI, and the Queen Mother narrowly escaped being killed by a German air raid when Elizabeth was a teenager.