snag WWIImag

The November 2009 issue of World War II magazine, showed a caption on it's front cover, depicted on the left:

The special report goes on to say:

"Of the 16,112,566 American veterans of the Second World War, fewer than 2.5 million remain alive. With another 311,000 projected to die this year, they are passing at the rate of 852 a day, or 35 an hour, or about one every two minutes. Sometime around Christmas 2014, the number will dip below one million, according to demographic tables compiled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and a decade later, in 2024, fewer than 100,000 will remain. In 2036, the latest year for which figures have been calculated, the cohort that fought and won the most destructive war in human history will be reduced to 370 survivors, less than half the size of an infantry battalion."

The whole article, which can be read on the Historynet website, explains in detail what will be lost when "The Greatest Generation" will have faded into history.