Paris ? Nearly 90 years after he was sent to the Western Front in World War I, Leon Weil has died.

Weil, who died Tuesday at the age of 109, was one of France’s last surviving veterans of the war. He was also a member of the Resistance in World War II.

“He who says that he was not afraid during the war is a liar,” Weil said in an interview published last November by the veterans’ office in which he recounted bayonet charges under fire. “The Germans were like us, poor guys getting beaten up for nothing.”

Weil was awarded France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor. After 1945, he built a career in sales of women’s fashion. He was a former boxer and swam until age 102.