REIMS, France — The ceremony was nearly as short as the event it commemorated. A children’s choir sang traditional songs, the French national anthem played, short speeches were made, and a parade of French military officials left to a cheering crowd of about 5,000 people.

The 40-minute event celebrating the 60th anniversary of the surrender of German troops to the Allied Forces in this city in the heart of champagne country offered a few more bells and whistles than it does most years, said Michael O’Donohue, who lives in Reims. But it was more or less the same quick and subdued ceremony that he has witnessed for nine years, marking the 17-minute long formal surrender by German forces in 1945.

“The speakers have just gone up a grade today,” said O’Donohue, who watched the event with his 10-year-old son, Joseph, under a blanket of gray clouds.

The French prime minister was scheduled to speak at the town hall in Reims following the parade in the Place de la Republique, a large traffic circle near the center of town, just blocks from the brick building where German Col. Gen. Alfred Jödl surrendered to U.S., British, French and Russian officials on May 7, 1965. But he was sick, so the French defense minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, spoke in his place.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Forces, used the town hall as his final wartime headquarters. He did not attend the surrender, partly because Jödl did not hold an equal rank to him.

The Reims surrender was one of two. Soviet leader Josef Stalin refused to recognize the Reims surrender, demanding a second signing in Berlin two days later.

Most cities in France hold an annual celebration on May 7 in honor of the end of the war, O’Donohue said, so local townspeople did not view this year much differently than any other year.

But the ceremony was reason enough for Dennis Eckel and his brother, Jim Eckel, to travel to Reims from their homes in San Clemente, Calif. Dennis Eckel wore a tan hat covered with pins from various events he attended over the years marking anniversaries of important turning points in World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Normandy landing.

“These guys are dying at 1,000 a day, so you might as well come out and see them,” Dennis Eckel said of the generation who fought and witnessed the war. “They won’t be around forever.”

Eckel’s father and four uncles served in the war, he said.

For Reims native Charles Descoins, the celebration gave him a chance to teach his 2-year-old daughter about her country’s history.

“It’s a way to show her … what has been done in the past and what needs to be done in the future,” Decoins said. “Not to make the same mistakes.”

The event holds a special meaning for 83-year-old Emile Lepoutre, who attended the event wearing a blue beret and blazer with a pin from his infantry unit in the French army. Lepoutre was fighting in Germany with a French tank unit when, in a 17-minute surrender-signing ceremony in room 119 of a small brick university building in Reims, the German forces surrendered.

Lepoutre attends the event every year, he said. And he celebrates with his wife in their home in Reims.

“With champagne, naturally,” Lepoutre said.