Last French WWI soldier dies at 110, ending era in France and Europe
March 17, 2008
The last French man standing from World War I, Lazare Ponticelli, died last Wednesday at the age of 110.
France remembered The Great War and its last French soldier at his death last week and at a service in Paris on Monday. President of France Nicolas Sarkozy made a four-page speech at the unveiling of a plaque honoring Italian-born French “Poilu” Lazare Ponticelli. The ceremony took place at Les Invalides in Paris, the final resting place of Napoleon and the site of the hospital for war veterans of France that he instituted. Sarkozy called on the youth of France to keep the 8.5 million fallen French of the Great War in their memories, and called the remembering of history a “human duty.” Former President of France Jacques Chirac was also in attendance at the ceremony.
“Poilu” is a warmly informal term for a French World War I infantryman, meaning, literally, “hairy one”. The word carries the sense of the infantryman’s typically rustic, agricultural background; beards and bushy moustaches were often worn. The term came into popular usage in France during the era of Napoleon Bonaparte and his massive citizen armies. It was still widely used as a term of endearment for the French infantry of World War I. The image of the brave, dogged and hardy Poilu was evoked many times during the remberances of Lazare Ponticelli and his comrades.
In 1914, Lazare Ponticelli lied about his age to enlist at 16 in the French foreign Legion and to defend his adoptive country at the front of Argonne, before fighting in Italy. He settled in France for good in 1921, requesting and and obtaining French nationality in 1939, at the launch of the Second World War, during which was active in Resistance.
After the unveiling of the plaque, a funeral mass was held at the church Saint-Louis-des-Invalides. Ponticelli’s coffin was carried by eleven légionaries as one minute of silence was observed in the administrative offices and flags were set at half-mast on public buildings. “France today, and Italy with us, pay homage to all the combatants of the Great War, at the departure of the last of them”, declared monsignor Patrick Gal, bishop of the French Armies in his homily. At the beginning of ceremony, the General Bruno Dary, military governor of Paris, hailed “the modesty of the soldier” who, with all his comrades in arms, sought only to do his duty to the fullest. “It is with thanks to you, and all the Poilus, that we live today in a free country. Thank you “, Guillaume, a fifth-year pupil said, in a poem read at the end of the ceremony. Nicolas Sarkozy sat in the front row, not far from the coffin wrapped in a French flag. Behind Sarkozy sat the Prime Minister of France, Francois Fillon, as well as members of the government and the presidents of the two assemblies, Christian Poncelet and Bernard Accoyer.
Former president Jacques Chirac exchanged some words with Nicolas Sarkozy before and after the mass. The Head of the State left the church hand in the hand with one of the daughters of Lazare Ponticelli to the main courtyard of the Hotel des Invalides, where the last Poilu had been given the right to full military honours. After having refused on several occasions any official ceremony, Lazare Ponticelli finally accepted the idea in January. He gave his agreement to “a state funeral without fanfare, nor a large procession” and had accepted “a mass at Les Invalides in homage to all his comrades who died in this horror of the war and whom France had promised never to forget.” Lazare Ponticelli was laid to rest in a small intimate ceremony in the family vault at the cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine, in the Val-de-Marne.
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