Lazare Ponticelli; France's Last WWI Veteran

France's last known remaining veteran of World War I died March 12 at age 110 after outliving 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in what they called "la Grande Guerre."

Lazare Ponticelli, who was born in Italy but chose to fight for France and was a French citizen for most of the past century, died at his home in the Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre, 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. It is up to us to be worthy of that," President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement.

France planned a national funeral Monday honoring Mr. Ponticelli and all the "poilus," an affectionate term meaning hairy or tough that the French use for their soldiers who fought in World War I.

The 1914-18 conflict, known at the time as the Great War or the "war to end all wars," tore Europe apart and killed millions. Only a handful of World War I veterans are still living, scattered from Australia to the United States and Europe. Germany's last believed WWI veteran died on New Year's Day.

Of the 8.4 million French fighters who served, 1.4 million died.

Mr. Ponticelli was born Dec. 7, 1897, in Bettola, a town in Northern Italy.

To escape a tough childhood, Mr. Ponticelli took off alone at 9 to the nearest railway station, 21 miles away in Piacenza, where he took a train to join his brothers in France and eventually became a French citizen, according to the veterans' office in Versailles.

In the French capital, he worked as a chimney sweep and then as a newspaper boy. When the war began, he was 16, so he lied about his age to enlist, the president's statement said.

Mr. Ponticelli decided to fight for France because it had taken him in.

"It was my way of saying, 'Thank you,' " he said in a 2005 interview with the newspaper Le Monde.

Mr. Ponticelli joined the Foreign Legion and served in the Argonne region of forest, rivers and lakes in northeast France, digging burial pits and trenches.