Friday, December 21, 2007

And Then There Were Two

There are only two American World War 1 veterans known to be still living today. A third, J. Russell Coffey, died this week at the age of 109. The other two veterans are 108 and 107 years old. The United States was involved in WW1 from 1917 to 1918. Therefore the handful of remaining "Great War" veterans in the world must be about 107 years old, if they were only 17 or 18 years old at the end of the war.

The youngest World War 2 vets (unless they lied about their age) are now about 80 years old.

The youngest Korean War vets would be in their early 70's now while the youngest possible Vietnam vets have turned 50. There have been multiple instances of Vietnam (and Vietnam era) vets serving in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My grandfather is a Korean war vet...75-ish. He operated a crane over there and built stuff. I call him every year on Veteran's day to thank him.

You can never say thank you enough to these heroes who left their wives and friends/families behind to go serve.