Veterans

[Thumper]

My former co-worker just said good-bye to his 93 year old father last weekend. He was a WWII Marine who island hopped in the Pacific. He was actually training at a base in Texas to be part of the Japanese invasion force when the atomic bombs ended the war.

It got me thinking about veterans and news stories I've heard recently. I can hardly believe the statistics I heard: In each of the next 4 years, half a million veterans will pass away. 1 in 4 deaths this year in the United States will be a veteran.

That's sad enough but this one:
Every day, 20 US veterans commit suicide.

[geonuc]

That last stat is sad.

[Rommie]

Sorry to hear about your friend's father. I recently heard that one of my British friends had a grandfather who was at Dunkirk and stormed the beaches on D-Day. I thought that was pretty crazy- more than one seemingly small incident saved his life by the sounds of it (for example, being two people off from getting on a nice cruise liner boat at Dunkirk and instead getting on a crappy fishing boat, but a bomb went down the funnel of the cruise liner boat so everyone on it died). It's so strange to think about how many people had ties to the military in those days, and how before you know it we won't have people around us who remember what WW2 was like.

Also, not the US, but I learned yesterday that 80% of all Soviet males born in 1923 didn't survive WW2. That boggled my mind.