Louis de Cazenave

Louis de Cazenave (Saint-Georges-with Aurac, Haute-Loire, October 16th 1897). It is, since the November 10th the 2006, oldest and one of both hairy Derniers French (French combatants of the First World War) still alive. Since August 25th, 2007 and the death of Aime Avignon, he becomes also the senior of the French men. In addition, Louis de Cazenave is also the eleventh oldest man of the world, and the fourth in Europe. He also became the eighth French man to cross the 110 years course.

Its service during the First World War (1916-1918)

In 1916, at 18 years, it leaves its native village, where his/her mother is postmistress. You will not have Alsace and Lorraine fredonne Louis de Cazenave, it is the objective of the French Staff. The young soldier is affected in a regiment of the colonial infantry, the 5th battalion of Senegalese Tirailleurs. , period that it describes by: Inevitably one did not put to us in the calmest places. Then it is transferred in artillery, There it was not comparable.

It was a bad corner that brawled all the time. I saw hundreds of killed, me I did not have anything a whole.

At the end of the war, it returns in Haute-Loire, it enters to the SNCF in 1919. He marries Marie in 1920, postmistress, who gives him three wire. Pacifist convinced, Louis de Cazenave takes part in the strikes of 1936 before taking his retirement in 1941. He subscribes with the human Fatherland , a libertarian newspaper and settles with Brioude with his family.

One of the last survivors of the Great War

See also: Last hairy

Since 1945, Louis de Cazenave carries out a “calm life” in his small village auvergnat. He lives today with his son junior and his domestic assistances in a small house built in the years 1920 and furnished with a small garden. Still little Louis time ago gardened but its health weakening it must give up it, the garden is from now on with the abandonment. In 1973, it loses his Marie wife.

For a few years, old the 110 years old man, with half deaf person and moving using a deambulator, has had to support the exhausting arrival of the journalists, who come to question one of the hairy last of the Great War. His/her son, Louis, 75 years old, add: The war it has spoken about it only for a few years, for which one has come to interview it, with us front, it never spoke about it. . In 2005, the High council of the fighting memory, chaired by the president of the Republic (then Jacques Chirac) had decided that funerals of national range for the last combatant of 14-18 would be organized and that this one would be buried with the the Pantheon. In connection with that, Louis de Cazenave answers without hesitation:

Not I want to go with mine, with my family with the cemetery of Saint-Georges-in Aurac. I want simplicity.

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