Alan Seeger (UNITED STATES)

Alan Seeger (1888-1916), was twenty-eight when he had his rendezvous with death at Belloy-en-Santerre on July 4, 1916. Seeger spent two years in the French Foreign Legion; as an American citizen he could not join the French military, so he did the next best thing and joined the Legion. After graduating from Harvard in 1910, specializing in Italian studies, Seeger lived for two years in Greenwich Village, and later in Paris' Latin Quarter where he wrote poetry and enjoyed the life of a young bohemian. The poetry he wrote then and while he was at the front was not published until 1917, a year after his death.

His prolific poem Rendezvous: 
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, 
shall not fail that rendezvous