French military personnel of World War I

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.

Léonce Joseph Perret (14 March 1880 – 12 August 1935) was a prolific and innovative French film actor, director and producer. He also worked as a stage actor and director. Often described as avant-garde for his unorthodox directing methods, Perret introduced innovative camera, lighting and film scoring techniques to French cinema.
Perret began his career as a relatively undistinguished stage actor. He was recruited to the film industry by the Gaumont Film Company. His numerous short films gained significant accolade in French cinematography. Until his emigration to the United States in 1917, he was a fixture of the Gaumont Film Company. On American soil, he produced several popular films, the most notable being Lest We Forget (N'oublions jamais) in 1918.
After returning to France, he directed the successful Koenigsmark in 1923. His film Madame Sans-Gêne (1925), starring Gloria Swanson, was the first joint Franco-American film production. In addition, Perret collaborated with many of the French and American idols of his generation such as Abel Gance, Gloria Swanson, Gaby Morlay, René Cresté, Arletty, Suzanne Grandais, Mae Murray, and Huguette Duflos.

Emmanuel Berl (2 August 1892 – 21 September 1976) was a French journalist, historian and essayist. He was born at Le Vésinet in the modern département of Yvelines, and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris. In 1937 he married the singer, composer and film actress Mireille Hartuch; she had nicknamed him "Théodore" (which is what appears on their tomb). Berl was the cousin of Lisette de Brinon.

Jacques Thibaud (French pronunciation: [ʒak tibo]; 27 September 1880 – 1 September 1953) was a French violinist.

Jean-Jacques Waltz (23 February 1873, Colmar – 10 June 1951), also known as "Oncle Hansi", or simply "Hansi" ("little John") was a French artist of Alsatian origin. He was a staunch pro-French activist, and is famous for his quaint drawings, some of which contain harsh critiques of the Germans of the time. He was also a French hero of both the First and the Second World Wars.

Joë Bousquet (French: [buskɛ]; 19 March 1897 – 28 September 1950) was a French poet.
Bousquet was born in Narbonne. Wounded on 27 May 1918 at Vailly near the Aisne battlelines at the end of the First World War, he was paralysed for the rest of his life, and lived a life largely bedridden, surrounded by his books. His physical incapacity and constant pain (for which he took opium) caused a retreat from the world, but also became the starting point for an extensive body of poetry and writing. He contributed poetry to the Carcassonne poetic review Cahiers du Sud, and carried on a correspondence with many writers and friends, including Louis Aragon, André Gide, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, and Simone Weil. He died in Carcassonne, and his home there is now a museum in his memory.
Bousquet became friends with the surrealists, and his poetry is often associated with them. He also purchased paintings by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Jean Fautrier, Wols, André Masson and Hans Bellmer, and was modeled by René Iché and painted by Jean Dubuffet.
His work was admired by many famous French writers of the 20th century, including René Char, Louis Aragon, André Breton, Maurice Blanchot, André Gide, Paul Valéry, and, most notably, Gilles Deleuze.

Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot (17 January 1897 – 25 May 1946) was a French medical doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in the basement of his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of about 60 to 200 victims during his lifetime, although the true number remains unknown.Despite showing early signs of mental illness and criminal behaviour, Petiot served in the First World War, graduated from an accelerated medical program, and began a dubious medical career that included performing abortions and supplying narcotics. His political career was marked by scandal, theft, and corruption. During the Second World War, Petiot operated a fraudulent escape network, offering safe passage to those wanted by the Germans for a fee, only to murder them, steal their valuables, and dispose of their bodies. In total, he was suspected of around 60 murders, but the remains of only 23 victims were found in the basement of his Paris home. Captured in 1944, Petiot claimed to be a Resistance hero who killed only the enemies of France. He was convicted of 26 counts of murder and was executed by guillotine in 1946. His life and heinous crimes have been depicted in film and comic books.

Didier Daurat (2 January 1891, Montreuil-sous-Bois – 2 December 1969, Toulouse) was a pioneer of French aviation. He was a fighter pilot during World War I, distinguishing himself by spotting the Paris Gun which was pounding Paris. After the war, he joined an airline company, which later became the Compagnie générale aéropostale - Aéropostale, then Air France, where he was a pilot and later operations director.
From then, the legend of the man with the iron will made him a boss admired by many, feared by all and hated by some. He did not hesitate to dismiss those who showed the slightest sign of weakness, questioned his methods or did not adhere to the 'spirit of the mail' (l'esprit du courrier).
Many of his pilots began their careers as grease monkeys, taking apart, cleaning and reassembling engines. According to Daurat, that formed character and taught pilots to respect their machines. However, he knew when he saw a talented pilot. When Jean Mermoz presented himself in Toulouse and made a dazzling display of piloting skill, Daurat told him, "I don't need circus artists but bus drivers." (Je n'ai pas besoin d'artistes de cirque mais de conducteurs d'autobus.) Nevertheless, he hired him to clean the engines.
These methods proved their worth because the Latécoère lines, and later Aéropostale, achieved a level of punctuality and reliability unknown for the time on the Toulouse-Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal route, and later from Toulouse-Santiago, Chile, Chile with a crossing of the South Atlantic and the Andes.

When Aéropostale was integrated with Air France in 1933, Daurat, friendless, was dismissed.
In 1935, he founded the Air Bleu company, which transported mail throughout France by day as well as by night. Results were remarkable, but the company was militarised with the declaration of war, in 1939.
Following the Liberation of France, he relaunched the night postal service before becoming operations chief for Air France at Orly, which until his retirement, in 1953.
He died in Toulouse in 1969. At his request, he was granted the honour of being buried on the Toulouse-Montaudran Airport, the former base of Aéropostale.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry took inspiration from him for the character of Rivière in Night Flight (Vol de nuit, 1931).

Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu, in religion Father Louis of the Trinity, OCD (7 August 1889 – 7 September 1964), was a Discalced Carmelite friar and priest, who was also a diplomat and French Navy officer and admiral; he became one of the major personalities of the Forces navales françaises libres. He was the chancellor of the Ordre de la Libération.

Jules Eugène Louis Jouvet (24 December 1887 – 16 August 1951) was a French actor, theatre director and filmmaker.