World War II veteran loans memorabilia to high school.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ World War II veteran Charles Kraft graduated from high school last spring, more than 50 years after he dropped out to help support his family and then drafted by the military to fight overseas.

Although he earned his general equivalency diploma years later, he was grateful to the high school for awarding him an honorary diploma and the chance to finally don a cap and gown.

In a return benevolent gesture, Kraft, 76, returned to Liberty High School last week to present the school with memorabilia from his tour of duty in Europe, which included the Battle of the Bulge.

The items, including foreign bayonets, Kraft's military identification tags and an inch-thick binder of fading black-and-white photographs, are on loan to the school to use to teach students about that time in American and world history.

"Any time that they can see and feel something ... that might have been used in the war," helps students better understand the war, said Mike Smith, who teaches American history at the high school.

"It's hard for me and other generations to understand that there was a time the world could have been taken over," Smith said.

The event, attended by U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, also called attention to a pending state bill that would establish a program to award honorary high school diplomas to World War II veterans. A large crowd of students from history classes, school and district officials and a handful of members from the Liberty American Legion Post 95, to which Kraft belongs, also were present.