Bridges wrote:
The most surprising item I see is Tennessee. The "Volunteer State" usually sends more soldiers to war per capita than other states. This along with Tennessee being one of the states that retirees flock to due to the tax structure, I would have guessed the total to be more, maybe in the 10,000 to 12,000 range.
Those are the remaining veterans - 315,501 Tennesseans served and over 5,700 died in battle (I couldn’t find which state sent the most people in WWII). In 2010, there were an estimated 45,908 Tennesseans remaining who served in the Second World War. In 2018, it was estimated that were 16,670. (stats from online resources). The numbers of those folks is declining rapidly as they age into their 90’s and, if they are lucky, their 100’s.
My dad, a European theater POW, passed in 1999 at 76 years old.