page_title: Alan Seeger
section_title: Death and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Alan Seeger / Death and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Alan Seeger, the poet. Seeger, serving in the French Foreign Legion, met his death before the U.S. entered the war.
context_page_description: Alan Seeger was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist. He is best known for the poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death, a favorite of President John F. Kennedy. A statue representing him is on the monument in the Place des États-Unis, Paris, honoring fallen Americans who volunteered for France during the war. Seeger is sometimes called the "American Rupert Brooke."
context_section_description: In the winter of 1916, he developed bronchitis and spent several months recovering before he returned to the battlefront. He was killed in action in 1916, during a French attack against the Imperial German Army at Belloy-en-Santerre, during the Battle of the Somme. His fellow French Foreign Legion soldier, Rif Baer, later described his last moments: "His tall silhouette stood out on the green of the cornfield. He was the tallest man in his section. His head erect, and pride in his eye, I saw him running forward, with bayonet fixed. Soon he disappeared and that was the last time I saw my friend." After being mortally wounded in no man's land, Seeger cheered on the passing soldiers of the Legion before he finally died from his injuries.
  Seeger had previously been falsely reported dead after the Battle of Champagne in October 1915, in which he had fought. The news of his actual death was met with public mourning in both America and France. After the USA entered World War I, Poems, a posthumously published collection of Seeger's war poetry, sold out six editions in a year. The poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, who had described Seeger as "the Hedonist" after meeting him in 1911, suggested that it might be best that he had died in the war, "for I don’t believe that he would ever have come anywhere near to fitting himself into this interesting but sometimes unfittable world."
  It is assumed that Seeger was buried with other victims of the Belloy-en-Santerre battle at the French National Cemetery in Lihons. After his death, Seeger's parents donated a bell to a local church and planted trees in his honor. Both of their contributions to Belloy-en-Santerre were destroyed during World War II.
caption: Alan Seeger in his French Foreign Legion uniform
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