Corporal Benito Martinez (April 21, 1932 – September 6, 1952) was a United States Army soldier who posthumously received the Medal of Honor — the United States' highest military decoration — for his actions on the near Satae-ri in Korea during the Korean War. Martinez was mortally wounded while solely defending his outpost. His actions enabled his company to take back the terrain which they had lost.
Oluf Bernhard Reed-Olsen (8 July 1918 – 14 October 2002) was a Norwegian resistance member and pilot during World War II. As a resistance member he is best known for the Lysaker Bridge sabotage as well as operating illegal radio transmitters. After the war he was a businessman and Scouting leader. He wrote books and contributed to a film based on his war experience.
William James Bordelon Jr. (December 25, 1920 – November 20, 1943) was a United States Marine who served in combat during World War II. During the Battle of Tarawa, he was killed in action while he led the assault on the enemy and rescued fellow Marines. For his acts of gallantry, he was posthumously awarded the United States' highest military honor — the Medal of Honor. He was the first U.S. Marine from Texas to be awarded the Medal of Honor for action in World War II.
(Hyppolyte) Louis Alexandre Dechet (alternatively, spelled Dechez; Lyon, 20 January 1801 - Lier, 18 October 1830) was a French actor and is regarded the author of the lyrics of the Brabançonne, the Belgian national anthem. His pseudonym was Jenneval, possibly named after the drama Jenneval, ou le Barnevelt français (1769) of Louis Sébastien Mercier.
Dechet worked in Ajaccio, Marseille and in 1826 at the Paris Odéon. Via Lille he finally came to Brussels, where he played at La Monnaie. In 1828 he returned to Paris in order to work at the Comédie Française, but returned to Brussels immediately after the July Revolution in 1830. He there served with the city guard which was responsible for maintaining law and order.
Dechet is said to have written the text of the Brabançonne during the first revolutionary gatherings at the café "L'Aigle d'Or" in the Brussels Greepstraat in August 1830, shortly after the performance of the opera La Muette de Portici, which triggered the Belgian revolution.
During the Belgian Revolution Dechet became a volunteer in the revolutionary army and joined the corps of Frenchman Charles Niellon. He died during a combat against the Dutch near Lier.
On the Place des Martyrs/Martelaarsplein in Brussels, a column honouring Dechet is to be found, which was created by the sculptor Alfred Crick and inaugurated in 1897.
Odd Toralf Øyen (8 September 1914 – 3 January 1997) was a Norwegian resistance member and anaesthesiological physician.
Arvid Kristian Storsveen (9 July 1915 – 27 April 1943) was a Norwegian Military Officer and organizer of the secret agency XU, the main intelligence gathering organisation within occupied Norway during World War II.
Gwenn-Aël Bolloré (5 September 1925, Ergué-Gabéric – 12 July 2001) was a French soldier, businessman, author, and publisher.
Raymond Abescat (10 September 1891 in Paris – 25 August 2001 in Rueil-Malmaison) was one of the last surviving veterans of World War I in France, its oldest living man and its oldest living veteran when he died aged 109 years, 349 days.
Federico Borrell García (3 January 1912 – 5 September 1936) was a Spanish Republican and anarchist militiaman during the Spanish Civil War, commonly thought to be the subject in the famous Robert Capa photo The Falling Soldier.
Lazare Ponticelli (born Lazzaro Ponticelli; 24 December 1897, later mistranscribed as 7 December – 12 March 2008), Knight of Vittorio Veneto, was at 110, the last surviving officially recognized veteran of the First World War from France and the last poilu of its trenches to die.Born in Italy, he travelled on his own to France at the age of eight. Aged 16, he lied about his age in order to join the French Army at the start of the war in 1914, before being transferred against his will to the Italian Army the following year. After the war, he came back to Paris where he and his brothers founded the piping and metal work company Ponticelli Frères (Ponticelli Brothers), which produced supplies for the Second World War effort and as of 2023 is still in business. He also worked with the French Resistance against the Nazis.
Ponticelli was the oldest living man of Italian birth and the oldest man living in France at the time of his death. Every Armistice Day until 2007 he attended ceremonies honoring deceased veterans. In his later years, he criticized war, and stored his awards from the First World War in a shoe box. While he felt unworthy of the state funeral the French government offered him, he eventually accepted one. However, 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.