more and more prominent vets are dying off, like a former mayor of sacramento who left office in 1982:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/obituaries/article220042540.html

or one of the last aussies from the siege of tobruk in north africa:

https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/one-of-the-last-rats-of-robruk-bill-corey-wwii-veteran-dies/news-story/d01aab4cd063db67f3208d84560088ea

it's interesting to think about how or if culture will shift once WWII vets are not merely old, but are - for the most part - outright dead.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108365&forum_id=2#37038096)

more typical is someone like george hw bush (currently 94) who joined up at age 18 in 1942. the median surviving WWII vet in the US is probably 94 to 96 right now.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108365&forum_id=2#37038376)

Fought as a pilot

Went to Yale Law School

Became the first black JAG for the USAF

Practice law for 40 years

Now he travels around the country giving speeches and shit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108365&forum_id=2#37041428)

My other grandfather was older (late 20s) and was part of a ski battalion that fought the Nazis in northern Italy. He was going to be sent to the Pacific at first, but later he was transferred and trained to ski and shoot.

My dad still has some Italian and German guns he brought home.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108365&forum_id=2#37041475)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_R%C3%B8nneberg

he was involved in some crazy nuclear-related hijinks. and, like so many other WWII vets, he is now dead.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108365&forum_id=2#37068400)

Ray Chavez, the oldest U.S. military survivor of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into World War II, died Wednesday. He was 106.

Chavez, who had been battling pneumonia, died in his sleep in the San Diego suburb of Poway, his daughter, Kathleen Chavez, told The Associated Press.

As recently as last May he had traveled to Washington, D.C., where he was honored on Memorial Day by President Donald Trump. The White House Tweeted a statement Wednesday saying it was saddened to hear of his passing.

“We were honored to host him at the White House earlier this year,” the statement said. “Thank you for your service to our great nation, Ray!”

Daniel Martinez, chief historian for the National Park Service at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, confirmed Wednesday that Chavez was the oldest survivor of the attack that killed 2,335 U.S. military personnel and 68 civilians.

“I still feel a loss,” Chavez said during 2016 ceremonies marking the attack’s 75th anniversary. “We were all together. We were friends and brothers. I feel close to all of them.”

Hours before the attack, he was aboard the minesweeper USS Condor as it patrolled the harbor’s east entrance when he and others saw the periscope of a Japanese submarine. They notified a destroyer that sunk it shortly before Japanese bombers arrived to strafe the harbor.

By then Chavez, who had worked through the early morning hours, had gone to his nearby home to sleep, ordering his wife not to wake him because he had been up all night.

“It seemed like I only slept about 10 minutes when she called me and said, ‘We’re being attacked,’ ” he recalled in 2016. “And I said, ‘Who is going to attack us?’ ”

“She said, ‘The Japanese are here, and they’re attacking everything.’ ”

He ran back to the harbor to find it in flames.

Chavez would spend the next week there, working around the clock sifting through the destruction that had crippled the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet.

Later he was assigned to the transport ship USS La Salle, ferrying troops, tanks and other equipment to war-torn islands across the Pacific, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.

Although never wounded, he left the military in 1945 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that left him anxious and shaking.

Returning to San Diego, where he had grown up, he took a job as a landscaper and groundskeeper, attributing the outdoors, a healthy diet and a strict workout program that he continued into his early 100s with restoring his health.

Born March 12, 1912, in San Bernardino, California, to Mexican immigrant parents, Chavez moved to San Diego as a child, where his family ran a wholesale flower business. He joined the Navy in 1938.

In his later years, as he became well known as the attack’s oldest military survivor, he’d be approached at memorial services and other events and asked for his autograph or to pose for pictures. He always maintained that those events were not about him, however, but about those who gave their lives.

“He’d just shrug his shoulders and shake his head and say, ‘I was just doing my job,’ ” said his daughter. “He was just a very nice, quiet man. He never hollered about anything, and he was always pleasant to everybody.”

Chavez was preceded in death by his wife, Margaret. His daughter is his only survivor.

http://time.com/5461933/oldest-pearl-harbor-military-survivor-dies-106/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108365&forum_id=2#37281124)