Freedom Isn't Free: Memorial Day Meditations

Memorial Day is a day for deep reflection on the many men and women who have died to preserve freedom in the world. I have my favorites, generally men who not only faced the horrors of battle but who wrote about it in poetry and prose that, many decades later, continue to inspire and to fill the soul with reverence and respect. Over the next couple of days I will feature some of them here.

The first I will memorialize is Alan Seeger, a young American who served with the French Foreign Legion in World War I. I first learned of Alan Seeger while I was a senior in high school, when I read his most famous poem, "Rendezvous with Death." It made an impression on me that I never forgot.

Seeger graduated from Harvard in 1910, then went to live in Greenwich Village where he wrote poetry for the next two years. He was in France when World War I began and strongly identified with France. Since the United States had not yet joined the war, Seeger joined the French Foreign Legion in order to fight for France.

Two years ago, while working out of a hotel in Bothell, Washington, I looked Seeger up on the internet and found a site that published his diaries and letters of the war. I was immensely impressed by his ability to write, by his intellect, by his prose in describing the war scenes in France and the beauty of the French countryside. After work each night, I came back to the hotel where I found a forlorn spot in a far corner of the hotel parking lot. There, on a concrete barrier, I sat and ate my microwaved burritto, drank my diet coke, smoked my cigar and read Seeger's words. I found it spiritual that this young man, so long dead (he died 90 years ago this summer) could speak to my heart and conscience so poignantly. Seeger, like I (or at least I like to think so) was a searcher for beauty and truth. As I read the last few passages of his diary I felt the magnitude of his loss - he had so much more to give the world than his time here allowed.

Alan Seeger was impressed with the idea of battle, of meeting death face to face. He wrote in a letter about the possibility of his death: "If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege."

Here is his most famous poem.

Rendezvous with Death
by Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air--
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
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Indeed, young Seeger did not fail that rendezvous. On July 4, 1916, at Belloy-en-Santerre, he was killed by machine gun fire as his regiment advanced toward the German line.