Vincent Feli Boy’s Blog

PARIS The coffin of Lazare Ponticelli, the last French survivor of the First World War, was carried by members of the Foreign Legion at a state funeral in Les Invalides. A day of commemoration was ordered by President Sarkozy, who wants younger generations to remember the sacrifices of les poilus - the affectionate nickname for the Great War veterans of France. The funeral was attended by Mr Sarkozy, government ministers, Jacques Chirac, the former President, representatives of the Italian Alpine brigade, to which Mr Ponticelli was called up in 1915, and members of his family.

Mr Ponticelli, an Italian who left his homeland aged 9 to join his brothers in Paris, joined the Foreign Legion as a 16-year-old in 1914 at the outbreak of the conflict. After fighting for Italy, he returned to France in 1921, where he and his brothers started a company that made factory chimneys. He eventually became a French citizen. He died last week, aged 110.

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Yet as long as the fighting continues, this rural community that became an emblem of the nation’s sacrifice cannot let go completely. “In a small town the worst thing that could ever happen is that we would forget,” said Craig Smith, mayor of the town of 9,100, an hour south of Champaign. “You don’t want the parents of the kids who were over there to ever think we have forgotten.” War hits home The war began March 20, 2003. Later that year, Paris residents lined the streets to say goodbye to 169 soldiers from the hometown 1544th, ordered to Kuwait and then Iraq.

Many in Paris figured the 1544th was not in for harm’s way because it was a transportation unit, not combat infantry. But within a day of arriving in Iraq, the unit lost Sgt. Ivory Phipps of Chicago to a mortar attack on base. The illusion of safety was shattered. In September 2004, townsfolk again lined the streets of Paris, this time as part of a somber procession to bury Sgt.

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