The last French veteran of World War One has died:
Lazare Ponticelli, who outlived more than 8.4 million other soldiers who fought under the French flag in World War I to become France’s last living veteran of the war intended to end all wars, died Wednesday at his home in Kremlin-Bicêtre, a Paris suburb. He was 110.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced the death, expressing “infinite sadness.”
Fewer than two dozen World War I veterans are thought to be alive. Six have died this year, including the last German veteran and the next-to-last French one.
Survival in itself is not necessarily an achievement, and Mr. Ponticelli said in an interview with Reuters last year that he “never knew how I got to this point.”
He was always emphatic that the glory belonged to the more than 1.3 million French soldiers who were killed.
As I’ve noted before, there is one remaining American veteran of World War One. His name is Frank Buckles, and he recently visited the Pentagon.
