Lazare Ponticelli | French WWI vet, 110
France's last remaining veteran of World War I died Wednesday at age 110 after outliving 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in what they called la Grande Guerre. Lazare Ponticelli died at his home in the Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicêtre, the national veterans' office said. "It is to him and his generation that we owe in large part the peaceful and pacified Europe of today," President Nicolas Sarkozy said. "It is up to us to be worthy of that." Only a handful of World War I veterans are still living, scattered from Australia to the United States and Europe. Germany's last WWI veteran died on New Year's Day. As a youth, Mr. Ponticelli worked in Paris as a chimney sweep and then as a newspaper boy. When the war broke out, he was just 16, so he lied about his age to enlist, the president's statement said. He joined the Foreign Legion during the war and served in the Argonne region of forest, rivers and lakes in northeast France, digging burial pits and trenches. "At the beginning, we barely knew how to fight and had hardly any ammunition," he said in the 2005 interview. "Every time that one of us died, we fell silent and waited for our turn." He later served with an Italian Alpine regiment. He returned to France in 1921, and he and his brothers started a company that made factory smokestacks. The company, Ponticelli Freres, grew into a manufacturer of specialized industrial equipment and is still in business. - AP
France's last remaining veteran of World War I died Wednesday at age 110 after outliving 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in what they called
la Grande Guerre.
Lazare Ponticelli died at his home in the Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicêtre, the national veterans' office said.
"It is to him and his generation that we owe in large part the peaceful and pacified Europe of today," President Nicolas Sarkozy said. "It is up to us to be worthy of that."
Only a handful of World War I veterans are still living, scattered from Australia to the United States and Europe. Germany's last WWI veteran died on New Year's Day.
As a youth, Mr. Ponticelli worked in Paris as a chimney sweep and then as a newspaper boy. When the war broke out, he was just 16, so he lied about his age to enlist, the president's statement said.
He joined the Foreign Legion during the war and served in the Argonne region of forest, rivers and lakes in northeast France, digging burial pits and trenches.
"At the beginning, we barely knew how to fight and had hardly any ammunition," he said in the 2005 interview. "Every time that one of us died, we fell silent and waited for our turn."
He later served with an Italian Alpine regiment.
He returned to France in 1921, and he and his brothers started a company that made factory smokestacks. The company, Ponticelli Freres, grew into a manufacturer of specialized industrial equipment and is still in business.
- AP