JOHNSTON COUNTY - Hundreds of airplanes thundered through the skies above Normandy, France, the night before the D-Day landings of World War II. On one of those planes, John Reeder, now a Selma resident, prepared to parachute through bursts of Nazi bullets and anti-aircraft fire.

"Stand up and hook up," an officer shouted as the plane approached the drop zone. Seconds after Reeder stood, three 50-caliber bullets ripped through some of the plane's seats.

"I didn't like that damn thing anyway," a sergeant said of his seat.

Reeder, a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, turned 90 in August. In Johnston County, he is one of an estimated 1,000 surviving World War II veterans, an aging group whose number has dwindled with the years.

"We're losing that generation that did so much for this country," said Charlie Smith, assistant secretary for the N.C. Division of Veterans Affairs.

More than 7,000 men and women from Johnston County served in World War II, according to research from the Johnston County Heritage Center. By the new millennium, an estimated 2,600 lived in the county. That number halved again over the next decade.

"You're losing a lot of history and a lot of experience," said Smith.

Reginald Poole, an 85-year-old veteran, died of lung cancer earlier this month. His children say they lost a pillar.

"My dad was not your typical man," said Robert Poole. "He was a superhero."

Like Reeder and countless other soldiers, the elder Poole saw firsthand the carnage that shaped the modern world.

He landed at Utah Beach just hours after Reeder parachuted, then fought through Europe for months. At the Battle of the Bulge, he helped contain one of the Nazis' final counteroffensives.

Like many veterans, Poole never thought much of the life-or-death struggle he survived.

"He said, 'Son, you just duck your head and you run and you hope you're not the one that gets it,' " said Poole's son, an Air Force reservist who served in the second Gulf War. "You're scared to death; you've got a job to do."

World War II veterans are now, on average, 87 years old. They are survivors of war and age; the life expectancy for a man born in the 1920s was about 60 years.

But for many, memories six decades old are still vivid.

Reeder's accounts are simple and sometimes chilling. During combat, a bullet took the helmet off his head. "It kind of makes your ears ring," he said.

He said he once manned a machine gun behind a stone wall, killing dozens of Nazi soldiers, and later raided an artillery position as it shelled the landing beaches in Normandy.

"It was kill or be killed," said Reeder, a native of Fairfield, Ill., who served with the 101st Airborne Division in World War II.

In the days after the landing, Reeder watched American GIs shoot a French sniper out of a tree -- she was 16, dark-haired and pregnant by a German soldier. As she lay dying, the woman claimed to have killed a half-dozen Americans.

Later, in the Netherlands, an exploding mortar flipped a Jeep on top of Reeder, sending him home.

After getting out of his full-body cast, Reeder quickly earned a living in the post-war world. He ran a furniture factory in Virginia for years, then moved to Raleigh to manage an auto-parts factory. But soon after, he was recalled to the Army in the Korean War, where he was an infantry captain and communications specialist.

When he came home, he joined the Signal Corps and in 1961 went to Vietnam. At the behest of the Pentagon, he returned for a second tour and planned a communications network that kept hundreds of thousands of American troops organized during that war. He left the military a full colonel.

Now, the sharp-witted man spends his days reading and keeping his hands busy with any number of small projects in his shop and around the house. He still mows the grass too.

"I never thought about being 90," Reeder said, days after his birthday. "I've lived longer than anyone in my family."

His wife died 17 years ago, a memory that drags pain and anger into his voice. He lives alone, in a house filled with books, pictures and self-made, intricately carved furniture and clocks. His children live nearby.

"You're supposed to use your head for something besides a hat rack," said Reeder, who is also commander of an American Legion post.

Reginald Poole, too, was modest and driven until the day he died; at age 50, he quit smoking and drinking coffee and tea on the same day. He was a stickler for savings, having grown up with cardboard in his shoes.

"That's the way he was," said his son. "I'm sorry; they were just a better, well-rounded human being than we are now."

When he landed at Utah Beach, Reginald Poole was just 19 years old. He later served in Korea, but for the rest of his life, he almost never spoke about combat.

Nationwide, about 2.5 million more World War II veterans still live. That's about 13 percent of those who served; in the coming decade, most will pass away.

Smith, of the Veterans Affairs office, estimated that fewer than 500 World War II veterans will be alive in all of North Carolina 10 years from now.

"It's kind of sad to see that generation leave us, but they can't hold on forever," he said.

As the 20th century fades into the past, the world will inevitably lose its witnesses to history. The state's last known veteran of World War I died in 2005, Smith said. Worldwide, just five veterans of that war still survive.