Louis de Cazenave

Louis de Cazenave (16 October 1897 – 20 January 2008) was a French supercentenarian who at the time of his death was the oldest surviving French veteran of World War I. His case is verified by the Gerontology Research Group.

de Cazenave became the oldest living poilu following the death of 111-year-old Maurice Floquet on 10 November 2006, and later following the death of 110-year-old Aime Avignon on 23 August 2007 also the oldest living man in France as well as the fourth-oldest living European man. After the death of Japanese Giichi Okumura on 13 October 2007, he was also the 12th-oldest living man in the world.

Biography
Louis de Cazenave was born and raised in Saint-Georges-d'Aurac in the Auvergne region of south central France. When he turned nineteen years old, at the end of 1916, he was mobilized into the military. He found himself in various units before being assigned to the colonial infantry front in the 5th Senegalese Tirailleur Battalion and fought in the Battle of Chemin des Dames.

At the end of the war, de Cazenave returned to Haute-Loire and married in 1920 to Marie, a postmistress with whom he had three sons. He became a railwayman, joining the predecessor to the SNCF. His experiences led him to become a convinced pacifist; later on, he participated in the strikes and demonstrations of the Popular Front in 1936 before going into retirement in 1941. During the Nazi occupation of France, he subscribed to the banned left-wing libertarian journal La Patrie Humaine and was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi regime.

Although at first refusing any decorations, de Cazenave accepted the Légion d’honneur in 1995, along with several other veterans.

He died at his family home in Brioude at age of 110 years, 96 days.