France's oldest WWI veteran dies aged 110; one veteran in France left

Louis de Cazenave died at his home in Brioude in the Auvergne region in central France yesterday, his son Louis de Cazenave said.

"He died at his house, in his sleep, without suffering," the son added.

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President Nicolas Sarkozy called his death a reminder of the 1.4 million French who had lost their lives in the 1914-18 war.

Mr de Cazenave survived both the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Second Battle of the Aisne a year later, two of the bloodiest episodes of the "war to end all wars".

Born on October 16, 1897, Mr de Cazenave was called up to become an infrantryman in 1916 and retired in 1941. He refused a military decoration but was eventually awarded the civilian légion d'honneur in 1999.

"Some of my comrades weren't even given a wooden cross," he told Le Monde newspaper in 2005.

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Recalling events etched into his mind 88 years earlier, he gave a grim account of the offensive on German positions along the river Aisne which caused about 350,000 French and German deaths and led afterwards to a partial French mutiny.

"You should have heard the wounded between the lines. They called out to their mothers, begged us to go finish them off," he told Le Monde.

"We found the Germans when we went to get water at the well. We spoke to them. They were just like us; they had had enough."

He described patriotism as "a way of making people swallow anything" and war as absurd and useless. "Nothing can justify it, nothing," he said.

Mr de Cazenave's funeral will be in Brioude on Tuesday where he will be buried.

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The last surviving veteran in France is Lazare Ponticelli, also 110, known as "poilus" or "beardy", a nickname given in France to First World War veterans because of conditions in the trenches.

He has refused an offer of a state funeral, saying it would show disrespect to war victims who never got the same honour.