I remember when I was a little kid, going to parades on Jamestown’s main street. The highlight of the show for me was the national guard guys with all their cool gear.

I remember – as probably a six or seven year old – watching a couple of the “older” guys, probably in their late thirties and early forties, and even talking with them. I talked about my proudest possession – my dad’s old book of WWII airplanes.

I remember one of the guys, probably a senior NCO (I remember a bunch of stripes and rockers on his sleeve) smiling. “I was in that war”.

I’ve thought about that guy often over the past 35 years, as the WWII generation has gone from being Dad to Grandpa, from “the establishment” to “the greatest generation”.

And I thought about them when I read that this may be the final Pearl Harbor Survivors’ Association meeting:

The survivors in Honolulu this week, many hunched, some in wheelchairs, men deeply wrinkled yet still trying to trade a history lesson for a quick kiss on the cheek, collectively know one thing: They defied death 65 years ago, but the inevitable is creeping up on them. They know this from the pain in their backs and hips. They know this as their eyesight fades and their hearing fails. And they know this because every five years, when they return to Pearl Harbor and find that their old buddies are not there, it’s a reminder that their friends either couldn’t endure the arduous Hawaii flight or died within the last few years.

“At our little happy hours each night you see the guys sitting alone who don’t have any old shipmates to speak with because they’ve all died,” said Debbie Marks, 35, who became involved in the survivors association because of her late grandfather. “I just spend the night walking around trying to get the ones who are alone to start talking to each other instead.”

This one killed me:

Donald Robinett came directly to the sign-in area for Pearl Harbor survivors when he arrived here this week.

“I am trying to find my shipmates,” the 89-year-old veteran announced excitedly. “I want to see which ones are here.”

A volunteer at the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, one of the groups organizing a massive reunion to mark the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on U.S. forces here, began flipping through a log book until she came to Robinett’s ship, the USS Tracy, a small mine-laying vessel that had been in port that infamous day. “Sir,” she said sadly, patting the old sailor on his shoulder, “you’re the only one here.”

There’s nothing I could possibly write here that wouldn’t sound stupid.

Mark Yost in Kansas City writing on the new WWI Museum in the WSJ.

Indeed, it’s often facts and figures that overwhelm visitors. Here, the curators have chosen only the most pertinent–and illuminating–figures and presented them in a way that’s easy to understand. For instance, a giant chart lists the number of troops from each country and the number of casualties they suffered. Of the 8.4 million Frenchmen who went to war, 4.5 million were either killed or wounded. As a result, 1 out of 3 Frenchmen age 18 to 30 died by 1917.

By comparison, Britain lost only 2.3 million of its 10.5 million troops, but suffered its greatest single day of combat ever on the Somme in July 1916. After shelling German trenches for days, the British expected to stroll across No Man’s Land unopposed. What they didn’t know was that the Germans had steel and concrete reinforced bunkers–stollen–that protected them from even the most devastating British shells. When the shelling stopped, the Germans emerged from their bunkers unharmed and proceeded to mow down 58,000 British troops.

But most of all, the museum does something very important, notes Mark; it puts the US involvement in proper context:

America sent over about two million men and women, some 365,000 of whom were wounded and 50,000 killed. These numbers pale in comparison to the millions of British, French and German casualties. Indeed, the exhibit makes clear that it was our industrial more than our military might that determined the outcome of the war. More important, our entry had the greatest consequences after the war, marking a significant turn for the U.S. from isolationist to global player. President Woodrow Wilson proposed his 14-point plan and the League of Nations, the beginnings of an internationalism that still defines our foreign policy…A map showing 20,000 miles of new borders that were drawn as a result of the war features Palestine, which the British were pushing as a Jewish homeland, and a place called Iraq.

But perhaps the most telling–and lasting–quote comes from humorist Will Rogers: “You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.”

Worth a read.