On November 11, 1999 The Washington Post reported: “Two weeks ago Captain Earl R Fox learned that he is the last world war II veteran still on active duty in the US armed forces.” The Post wrote that Fox described himself as “the last direct physical link between today’s military and the warriors of Midway, Normandy and Iwo Jima.”
To the western mind the crossbow is probably most associated with the middle ages, but its invention predates that era by about 1000 years.