Lazare Ponticelli
Lazare Ponticelli was born in Cordani, a frazione in Bettola, Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy. Aged 16, he lied about his age in order to join the French Army at the start of the war in 1914. He served at Soissons in Picardy, northeast France, and at Douaumont, near Verdun. In 1918, he was gassed in an Austrian attack that killed hundreds of his fellow soldiers.
About Lazare Ponticelli in brief
Lazare Ponticelli was born in Cordani, a frazione in Bettola, Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy. Aged 16, he lied about his age in order to join the French Army at the start of the war in 1914. He served at Soissons in Picardy, northeast France, and at Douaumont, near Verdun. In 1918, he was gassed in an Austrian attack that killed hundreds of his fellow soldiers. He was transferred against his will to the Italian Army the following year. After the war, he and his brothers founded the piping and metal work company Pont icelli Frères, which produced supplies for the Second World War effort. He also worked with the French Resistance against the Nazis. At the time of his death he was the oldest living man of Italian birth and the oldest man living in France.
He felt unworthy of the state funeral the French government offered him, but accepted one. He asked that the procession emphasise the common soldiers who died on the battlefield. French president Nicolas Sarkozy honored his wish and dedicated a plaque to them at the procession. In his later years, he criticized war, and stored his awards from the First World War in a shoe box. In one of his last interviews, he said: ‘You shoot men who are stupid at fathers who are not your fathers’ He was the last surviving officially recognized veteran of the First WWI from France and the last poilu of its trenches to die at the age of 110. The Knight of Vittorio Veneto is a knight of the Italian Order of Merit.
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This page is based on the article Lazare Ponticelli published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
