France honours last WWI veteran

President Nicolas Sarkozy led a ceremony in Paris to commemorate him, and eight million other Frenchmen who fought in the conflict.

Mr Sarkozy said it was a national duty to keep their memory alive.

Mr Ponticelli, originally Italian, had lied about his age in order to join the French Foreign Legion in 1914, aged 16.

Understanding and respect

Draped in the colours of the French flag, Mr Ponticelli's coffin was carried into a church at Les Invalides, the golden-domed military hospice where Napoleon is buried.

State officials across France held a minute's silence, and flags flew at half-mast on public buildings.

The ceremony was also attended by the former French President Jacques Chirac and current Prime Minister Francois Fillon.

Mr Sarkozy also laid a wreath in honour of all those who died in WWI - around one-and-a-half million people.

"Beyond the silence of death, they speak to us about what they endured. They tell us that understanding, respect and solidarity are the only shields against barbarism," he said.

Foreign legion

Mr Ponticelli was born into a poor family on 7 December 1897 in Emilia Romagna, northern Italy.

He made his way, at the age of nine, to France to join his two brothers, and worked in Paris as a chimney sweep and paper boy.

He later joined the army to thank the French for taking him in.

There are only a handful of surviving WWI veterans from other countries, including British pilot Henry Allingham and Austro-Hungarian artillery man Franz Kunstler.

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