Ponticelli - Last French WWI Vet Passes

Messr. Lazare Ponticelli, the last surviving French WWI veteran, passed away Wed. Mar 12th, at age 110. Au Revior et merci Messr. Ponticelli.

Mr Ponticelli, who lived with his daughter in a southern suburb of Paris, had initially refused a government offer of a state funeral, the AFP news agency reported.

But he later decided to accept "in the name of all those who died, men and women", during WWI.

Further:

Ponticelli 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. Every time that one of us died, we fell silent and waited for our turn," he said in the 2005 interview.

He also recalled running into no man's land to save a wounded comrade stuck in barbed wire.

"He was shouting, 'Come and get me, I've severed a leg.' The stretcher-bearers didn't dare go out. I couldn't bear it any longer," he said.

When Italy entered the war in 1915, Ponticelli was called up to fight with an Italian Alpine regiment. He tried to hide, but was found and sent to fight the Austrian army.

He described moments of fraternity with enemy Austrian soldiers.

"They gave us tobacco, and we gave them loaves of bread. No one was shooting any more. The headquarters found out, and moved us to a tougher zone," he told Le Monde.

He described the joy in receiving letters from a milkmaid who "adopted" him when he was serving in Italy. He couldn't read at the time, so comrades read them to him, according to a biography by the Versailles veterans' office.

The Italian President Giorgio Napolitano expressed condolences "in the name of all Italians" to the veteran's daughter, Jeannine Desbaucheron.

By fighting first for France and then for Italy, Ponticelli "offered an admirable example of an elevated sense of duty and dedication to both his adoptive country and his country of birth," Napolitano wrote in a message to her.

God Bless, Mr. Ponticelli, and Fare Thee Well.