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Waycross WWII veteran: 'I am…the last one to survive'

With each passing day, the number of Americans alive who served in World War II dwindles. According to the National WWII Museum, just three percent of the 16 million who served are still alive in 2018.

WAYCROSS, Ga. - With each passing day, the number of Americans alive who served in World War II dwindles. According to the National WWII Museum, just three percent of the 16 million who served are still alive in 2018.

One of the few lives in Waycross, Georgia and celebrated his 98th birthday last week.

Bob Willis is open about having outlived most of his friends, including those he served with in WWII.

“I am, I guess, the last one to survive,” he told First Coast News.

Willis enlisted in his early 20s, first in the Army National Guard before being called to active duty in the Army.

“There was nothing to do around Waycross and it was an income,” he said. “The pay was about $21 a month.”

In July 1944, a month after D-Day, Willis and his unit arrived on the beach in Normandy, France to begin his first trip to the front lines. The beach, still littered with debris, was his first real glimpse of war.

“We didn’t have time to be scared, I guess,” Willis said. “We wanted to get there and do our part. And it didn’t take long for us to catch up and see what war was like.”

Willis simply described war as hell. In his time fighting in both France and Germany, he was shot twice and injured by a grenade.

That’s lucky, compared to many of his comrades.

“Didn’t expect to lose anybody, but we did,” Willis said. “In Waycross, we had about five or six who didn’t make it back. I knew every one of them.”

Light among darkness during those long days and frigid nights came in the form of a letter from a young woman back in Waycross. The woman, named Pearl, was Willis’ mother’s favorite grocery store clerk.

Pearl’s fiancé had previously been killed in the war.

“We had a good life together,” Willis said of the woman he later married. The two began a family which has grown to include a great granddaughter.

Pearl passed away in 2004 at 80 years old.

But at 98, Willis is still going strong; he is about to drive himself and lives alone with his dog, Butter.

The war is now just part of his decades-long story, but it’s a story fewer people can tell with each passing day.

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