France's last surviving veteran of World War One, an Italian immigrant who
fought in the trenches with the Foreign Legion, has died at the age of 110

 KREMLIN-BICETRE, FRANCE (NOVEMBER 11, 2007) (REUTERS) - France's last surviving veteran of World War One, an Italian
immigrant who fought in the trenches with the Foreign Legion, has died at the
age of 110, the president's office said on Wednesday.
    Lazare Ponticelli, who joined his adopted country's army as a
16-year-old at the outbreak of the war with Germany in 1914, had attended a
memorial ceremony as recently as November 2007.
    Following the death of 110 year-old Louis de Cazenave in January,
Ponticelli was the last of the "poilus" ("hairy ones"),
the nickname given to the unshaven troops who embodied French defiance in one
of the bloodiest wars in the country's history.
    Ponticelli, who described war as "idiotic", had initially
refused an offer of a state funeral made by former President Jacques Chirac,
considering it would be an insult to the men who had died without
commemoration.
    He relented after Cazenave's death, saying he would accept a simple
ceremony "in homage to my comrades".
    His death severs the last living link with a conflict whose traces can
still be seen in war memorials in nearly every town and village in France.
    In a war fought largely on their home soil, about 8.4 million French
soldiers served and about 1.3 million were killed in battles that transformed
familiar place names such as Verdun and the Chemin des Dames into bywords for
horror and suffering.
    Ninety years later, the Great War "poilu" in his sky-blue
uniform still occupies a special place in the French imagination and
Ponticelli's death is expected to be marked by wide media coverage and
tributes from political leaders.
    Ponticelli was born into a poor family on Dec. 7, 1897, in the northern
Italian town of Bettola and came to France as a 9-year-old, walking part of
the way to save money.
    He worked as a chimney sweep and newspaper boy before enlisting in the
Foreign Legion when war broke out, saying later that it was "a way of
thanking" the country that had fed him.
     He served at Soissons in Picardy, the Argonne region of northeast
France and at Douaumont, near Verdun, on one occasion rescuing a wounded
German and a wounded French soldier caught between the front lines.
    "I was in all sorts of danger, during the war and at other times
as well. We were all going to die," he told reporters at an Armistice Day
ceremony in 2007.
     With Italy's entry into the war in 1915, Ponticelli was conscripted
into the Italian Army and fought against the Austrians in the Tyrol, where he
was wounded in the face.
    He made his way back to France after the war and, with two brothers,
founded Ponticelli Freres, a successful engineering firm that still employs
2,000 people.
    Ponticelli took French citizenship in 1939, settling in the working
class Paris suburb of Kremlin Bicetre, where he attended November 11 Armistice
Day ceremonies regularly.