Lazare Ponticelli, the last surviving French veteran from the First World War, has died at the age of 110. He is expected to received a state funeral and France will declare a national day of remembrance.
Ponticelli was born in Italy in 1897, but moved to France as a child. At the outbreak of the First World War he lied about his age in order to join the French Foreign Legion, however by 1915 - when Italy entered the war - he was forced to join the Italian Army.
He served as a machinegunner, fighting on the Austrian front where he was both wounded and gassed during the course of the war. He eventually took French citizenship and remained there for the rest of his life, running a successful piping business.
[...] vetran of the Spanish Civil War. Second, again at UKNIWM, we have a post on the death of the last French veteran of the First World War. Finally, we have a post at Rantings of a Civil War Historian about the anniversary of the death [...]