The End of an Age: France's Last WWI Vet Dies

by Jordan Yerman | March 12, 2008 at 10:30 am

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France's last surviving veteran of World War One, Lazare Ponticelli,
has died at the age of 110.
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death on Wednesday, paying
tribute to the last "poilu", as French WWI veterans were known.
"Today, I express the nation's deep emotion and infinite sadness," he
said.
Mr Ponticelli, originally Italian, had lied about his age in order to
join the French Foreign Legion in August 1914, aged 16, Mr Sarkozy
said.

With the death of those who took part, we witness the death
of direct oral history, and are left to the whims of schoolbooks. The
personal is far more difficult and hard to categorize, but is that
much more important for it.

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