# Veterans of Far Gone Wars **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 28, 2003, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063 "2003-02-28T04:45:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2003, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/1 "2003-02-28T04:45:34Z")
After witnessing last year’s Rememberance Day ceremonies it became apparent to me that there are very few survivors left from the First World War. Are there any statistics available as to how many are left? Thousands? Hundreds? On a related note, I would assume that there are now no longer any survivors from previous 20th Century Wars, such as the Anglo-Boer War and The Philippine-American War. Is there any record of who the final survivors of those wars were? ---
**Author:** ![jk1245](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@jk1245](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jk1245)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/2 "2003-02-28T05:44:05Z")
Hmmm…interesting question. The [Infoplease](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004615.html) website lists 2212 remaining US WW1 veterans, though I don’t know how old that data is. I imagine we are losing them at a pretty high rate now, so if that number is even a few years old, it could be under 1000 by now. I couldn’t find numbers for other countries. FWIW, According to [this site](http://www.spanamwar.com/lastsurvivor.htm) , the last surviving Spanish-American War survivor died in 1993 at age 110 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2003, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/3 "2003-02-28T06:12:18Z")
Just a few months ago the last surviving widow of a Confererate veteran from the Civil War died. There’s still one widow of a Union veteran of the Civel War alive. As you may guess, in each case, a soldier who was just barely old enough to be in the Civil War married in old age a young woman. ---
**Author:** ![mcbiggins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7c8e57/32.png) [@mcbiggins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcbiggins)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2003, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/4 "2003-02-28T06:48:42Z")
I can’t find the cite, but a few months ago the Globe and Mail found that they could find only a handful of Canadian World War I veterans still alive. I can’t recall the number, but it was less than a dozen. ---
**Author:** ![mcbiggins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7c8e57/32.png) [@mcbiggins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcbiggins)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2003, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/5 "2003-02-28T06:58:17Z")
Along the same lines, and threatening to drift both off topic and into general question territory: What happens to Veterans/Rememberance Day in 25-30 years when all of the veterans of the World Wars have passed on? I know that the Americans still have Korean and Vietnam vets to think about, but in places like Canada or Britain the number of vets from Cold War era conflicts is relatively small. I know from experience that Canada has a World War I specific focus to their Rememberance Day activities, with everything revolving around Billy Bishop and Flanders Fields, and everyone wears a poppy on their jacket. Does this fade away? Or does it continue on for generations who have no real connection to what occurred, and no real concept of what exactly they are supposed to be remembering? ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2003, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/6 "2003-03-01T01:59:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Just a few months ago the last surviving widow of a Confererate veteran from the Civil War died. There’s still one widow of a Union veteran of the Civel War alive. As you may guess, in each case, a soldier who was just barely old enough to be in the Civil War married in old age a young woman. Uh hu so they died at the ripe old age of 137 after getting married the day after they were born? ---
**Author:** ![mcbiggins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7c8e57/32.png) [@mcbiggins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcbiggins)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2003, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/7 "2003-03-01T02:28:40Z")
[http://www.appalachianlife.com/stories.htm](http://www.appalachianlife.com/stories.htm) No, treis, these are women who, in their teens, married old men who had, as teens, served in the civil war. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/veterans-of-far-gone-wars/158063/8 "2003-03-02T23:56:12Z")
You might be able to make some good guesses about Canadian veterans by reverse-engineering the formula used by the USVA to project the number of living veterans at the bottom of [this page](http://www.va.gov/pressrel/amwars01.htm). VA estimates that there will be one remaining American veteran of World War I in 2018, while there will still be over 200,000 American veterans of World War II in 2020.