Last "poilu" from WWI dies at 110

[globenstein]

Surprisingly enough, I have come across a piece of news that wasn't already posted here.

PARIS: Lazare Ponticelli, the last French soldier to have endured the horrors of World War I, died at the age of 110 on Wednesday, President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

"Through him, I bow to the millions of 'poilus' who responded with exemplary everyday courage to the call of the invaded homeland," Sarkozy said, using the French word commonly used in France to describe the unshaven men on the front lines.

[...]

Only a handful of veterans from World War I survive, including five men who fought for Britain and one woman who served with the British Air Force, according to Dennis Goodwin, the chairman of the First World War Veterans' Association. Goodwin said that he thought there were 13 remaining veterans from the nations that participated in the war who were still alive, including those who served in Britain.

Jerry Newberry, spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Headquarters, said that one American soldier from the war remained alive, Frank Woodruff Buckles, 107.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/12/europe/veteran.php


There remains no one in France now who has lived the Great War. From the small number of WWI soldiers left, I would be curious to know if anyone here has ever met such a veteran, perhaps from their family?

 

[Pinocchio's Hoof]

BAAH... its a shame these were true hero's , real men who fought because they had to not just because they were told to.

Salut monsieur Ponticelli,pouvoir vous trouve la paix dans la tranquillité de mort, avec la connaissance vous nous avez gardés sûr. VIV LA FRANCE, VIV LA EUROPE

 

[nietzschefan]

I met this guy once at an Air Cadet Banquet:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2003/01/07/pilot_obit030107.html

Henry John Lawrence Botterell, perhaps the last remaining First World War fighter pilot, has died at the age of 106.
Botterell died last Friday at a nursing home in Toronto.

As a 20-year-old bank clerk, Botterell joined the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) in 1916. When he died, the Department of Veterans' Affairs believed he was the last surviving pilot in the world to have seen action in the Great War.



Henry John Lawrence Botterell

Botterell hardly had a graceful takeoff as a pilot, crashing at Dunkirk on his second flight when his engine failed in September 1917.

After six months in hospital, he was discharged and sent back to Canada.

He re-enlisted and joined the 208th Squadron of the RNAS, where he served from May 11 to Nov. 27, 1918.

Botterell never flew again after he returned to Canada.

He brought home a fence post that was caught in the wing of a Sopwith Camel he flew on a low-level sortie. The souvenir how rests at the National War Museum in Ottawa.

 

[nietzschefan]

I also met Alfred Atkey's son, very proud of his dad.

In an historic dogfight known as "Two Against Twenty," Atkey and Gass, together with John Gurdon and his observer, Anthony Thornton, encountered 20 German scouts during the evening of 7 May 1918. In the epic battle that followed, Atkey and Gass shot down 5 enemy aircraft while Gurdon and Thornton knocked down 3. Two days later, Atkey and Gass again shot down 5 enemy aircraft in one day.