Nowhere is the cliche that life is short more true than on the battlefield. On Memorial Day, we honor the memory of those who died in service to their country. And while some of those who have given their lives have done so at a shockingly young age, I think it’s fair to say that all who are killed in combat have, in an important sense, died before their time.

Then there are the survivors. Some of them hang in for a remarkably long time, living as long a life as any of their contemporaries can hope for. By the time I was born, the last of the Civil War veterans had died. Apparently there were veterans of the Spanish American War among us until the early 90′s, although this group has never received the kind of attention bestowed on the veterans of the bigger wars.

When I was a kid, the term “veteran” applied to three groups: Korean War veterans, who were guys about the same age as my dad; World war II veterans who were a bit older than my Dad, and therefore old; and World War I veterans who were a bit older than my grandfather, and therefore unimaginably old. (Vietnam vets started emerging as a distinct class in my early teen years.)

Today the remaining World War I veterans really are quite old, even by my vastly adjusted definition of the term. There are only six left, according to the linked article, and two of those have not met the documentation requirements to be confirmed as bona fide World War I vets, although I will personally take their word for it. The youngest members of that group are 106 years old. Sadly, it’s clear that the Memorial Day is coming very soon when there will be no more surviving World War I veterans.

I heard not long ago that we are currently losing World War II veterans at a rate of 1000 a day. That estimate seems high to me, well over a quarter of a million a year, but it is possible. I wonder how that rate compares to the death rate during the war years? Has the death rate caught up? It’s very sad that we would regard a death rate of 1000 per day during wartime as a tragic necessity — with equal emphasis on the “tragic” and “necessity” parts — but today we view the same rate of loss as unremarkable as it is unavoidable.

In 25 years, the remaining World War II veterans will be abut the same age as the remaining World War I vets are today. There will be many more of them, in part a testament to improvements in medical technology, and in part a reflection of the difference in scale between the two wars. However, there may be another important difference between the two groups. Perhaps some of those surviving World War II vets in 2035 will have something that I wish the World War I vets could have, but I think very unlikely at this point — an open-ended life expectancy.

If so, that means that Memorial Day 50 years from now, or even 125 years from now, we may still have World War II survivors among us. To them, and to all of us, I offer my Memorial Day wish:

Live to see it.