I don't get the long life of war vets either, my great grandfather was gassed twice in WWI and caught malaria fighting in Turkey yet lived until he was 99yrs old, didn't stop driving until he was 93.Most of his regiment lived well into their 80s and 90s as well he wrote to most of them his whole life.

> long life of war vets

If my father was any indication, he came out of WW2 and the Korean War with a vast appreciation for being alive. That had a positive effect on the rest of his life, and he passed at 93.

If he was 20 in the war, he could have been 65 in the late 80s. (Yes, it's true that not everyone lives that long, but it's on the short side.)

"late 80s" there would be more likely to refer to "in the years 1987-1989 or so" than to "at an age of 87-89".

I think "his late 80's" seems more likely. The GP post mentions his grandfather fighting in the Boer War (~1900) which would make him almost 110 years old in the late 80's

Perhaps. It would seem equally unusual for a 65+ year old soldier to be in a position to be captured as a PoW in Japan.

The Japanese had all the Dutch imprisoned in Indonesia, not just soldiers. A number of male prisoners had been shipped off to Japan to work in labor camps.

Yes, but ancestor post says "He was a Dutch Soldier captured by the Japanese held as a prisoner of war."

At the end of the day, anyone who fought in the Boer war was born no later than the early 1880's.

If he was still in the military at that point, then wouldn’t that be an accurate description?

Of course. At that point though, it would be unusual enough [for a soldier to serve actively in 1902 and in 1945] that when interpreting conflicting points in a story, that you have to consider if perhaps the author hasn't gotten something mixed up in the memory or in the telling.

If I told a story about my own grandfather's service in World War II in the Seabees (by happenstance he was also a coal miner as a civilian), I'd be likely to get something wrong, not out of intention to mislead, but just that I pieced together the story in my own memories in a certain way when I was told the stories as a young boy. I may mix in details from my other grandfather's service or a great-grandfather's time.

Then, weigh that against a non-native speaker's chance to use a common English idiom "in the late 80s" in a non-standard way and against the chance that someone would express some negative interpretation of someone passing in their late 80s as being perhaps related to radiation exposure and black lung.

It's all speculation for all of us except one. ;)

Perhaps it was his regimen in the Dutch army which had captured Churchill during the Boer war. I.e., the leadership in that regimen were present during that time in the Boer War.

I don't know the story all that well because this is all stories from decades ago. The person who knew it best currently has dementia.

(Wish HN had the ability to edit a comment from 5 hrs ago.)