Growing Old – Part 1

We are soon going to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the First World War, the War to End All Wars.  I am not going to wax long and hard on how ironic that is.  After all, many others have done so, ad infinitum. 

Instead, it began me thinking on the fact that there are no longer any veterans of that war alive today.  The number of people who even remember anything about the war are extremely rare, to the point that they might not really exist anymore.  Assuredly, we are a few short years away from there being no one as time continues to march on.

This has caused a reflective moment on my part.  As a young child, I remember reading about the death of the last Civil War veteran.  This claim has since been debunked but the timing was such that it could have been.  However, as a teenager I still remember several reports interviewing the last surviving former American slaves.  This was in my lifetime.

As a young person, I was used to meeting veterans of the latter days of the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Border War against Poncho Villa, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, as well as other little insurgencies.  Obviously, life was not about wars but these were the touchstones to mark points in time.  In fact, growing up, all of my teachers obviously remembered WWII, with a lot of them serving in that war.  I even had a couple of teachers who told personal stories of WWI.

If anything tells me how time troops on it is to look at these wars.  There are no longer any survivors of the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Border War, WWI, or the Spanish Civil War.  They have all passed away.  In addition, the veterans from WWII are in their nineties. 

It is strange that thinking about war to cause me to reflect on just how darned old I am getting.  I am faced with the facts that all of the adults of my childhood are gone.