| Page 2 of 2 < |
Lazare Ponticelli; France's Last WWI Veteran
In the Foreign Legion, Lazare Ponticelli dug burial pits and trenches.
(By Francois Mori -- Associated Press)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"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, Mr. 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 the letters to him, according to a biography by the Versailles veterans' office.
Giorgio Napolitano, president of Italy, expressed condolences "in the name of all Italians" to the veteran's daughter, Jeannine Desbaucheron.
By fighting first for France and then for Italy, Mr. 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.
Mr. Ponticelli returned to France in 1921, and he and his brothers started a company that made factory smokestacks. The company, Ponticelli Freres, grew into a manufacturer of specialized industrial equipment and is still in business.
Associated Press writers John Leicester and Pauline Freour contributed to this report.
![[Campaign Finance]](http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content//graphic/2007/10/01/GR2007100100821.gif)
