Alan Seeger was born on 22nd June 1888 in New York.  When he was one the family moved to Staten Island and nine years later onwards to Mexico for two years. 

After attending several elite preparatory schools he enrolled at Harvard in 1906, where he also edited and wrote for the Harvard Monthly.

He graduated in 1910 and went to live the life of a bohemian in New York’s Greenwich Village, and thereafter moved to Paris to continue his poetry writing in the Latin quarter.

War’s looming dark shadow was to have a transformative effect on the young poet and on 24th August 24th 1914 he joined the French Foreign Legion so he could fight for the Allies.

On American Independence day, 4th July 1917 whilst urging on his fellow soldiers in a successful charge at Belloy-en-Santerre he was hit several times by machine gun fire and died.

His poetry was published posthumously later that year, it although not a great success his poem ‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death . . .’ is now regarded as a classic.

On the sixth anniversary of his death a memorial to the American volunteers was unveiled in the Place des Etats-Unis. 

The memorial was created by Jean Boucher who had used a photograph of Seeger as his inspiration. 

Also inscribed upon it are Seeger’s moving words: “They did not pursue worldly rewards; they wanted nothing more than to live without regret, brothers pledged to the honour implicit in living one s own life and dying one s own death. Hail, brothers! Goodbye to you, the exalted dead! To you, we owe two debts of gratitude forever: the glory of having died for France, and the homage due to you in our memories.”

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