"Next - to - last known French veteran of WWI dies at 110"

San Antonio EXPRESS - NEWS, Tuesday, January 22, 2008.

"Served in different infantry regiments..."

"He took part in 1916's Battle of the Somme, where a million died.

"PARIS -- World War I veteran Louis de Cazenave died Sunday at age 110, his son said, leaving just one known French survivor of the 1914 - 1918 conflict.

"The last known French veteran of World War I -- known as poilus, meaning hairy or tough -- is Lazare Ponticelli, also 110.

Perhaps President Nicolas Sarkozy says it best, as the EXPRESS - NEWS quotes him:

"His [De Cazenave's] death is an occasion for all of us to think of the 1.4 million French who sacrificed their lives during this conflict, for the 4.5 million wounded, for the 8.5 million mobilized."

Amen to all that: Here's to those fine old gentlemen, too, in such diverse places as Donna, Texas and Alamo, Texas, -- plus in 1978, at least, Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- who likewise fought in WWI.

And who so many of us were privileged to know in our teen years in the early Sixties!