obscurely fallen
by death, something that we can
look upon with pride

Adapted from the poem, Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France.

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When—with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray—
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond their seas.
Those to preserve their country’s greatness died;
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make
That from a war where Freedom was at stake
America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

As published in Poems By Alan Seeger, (New York Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York ,1918).

In the Introduction to the book, Poems, one William Archer, a Scottish author, theatre critic, wrote, “He had hoped to have been in Paris on Decoration Day, May 30th, to read, before the statue of Lafayette and Washington, the “Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France,” which he had written at the request of a Committee of American residents; but his “permission” unfortunately did not arrive in time. Completed in two days, during which he was engaged in the hardest sort of labour in the trenches, this Ode is certainly the crown of the poet’s achievement. It is entirely admirable, entirely adequate to the historic occasion. If the war has produced a nobler utterance, it has not come my way.”

Today in the New York Times, is the opinion piece, If Only More Americans Could See This Place by Jonathan Darmen.

It is an article about visiting a cemetery in Holland for US servicemen who died in Europe in World War 2.

Mr. Darmen writes, The American service members buried in the soil of Europe grew up in a country where many respectable politicians claimed America had no business preserving peace on the European continent or promoting freedom in the world. There was no NATO, no United Nations, no American-led global order.

When you stoop down on European soil to read an American soldier’s name on a grave, you see how policies sold as “America First” can lead to unthinkable suffering and loss.

Travel through Europe today and you’ll see the war-forged American-European partnership embedded everywhere — in gleaming embassies and in hulking military bases, in ubiquitous English-language ads and in the YouTube clips streaming on teenagers’ phones. But nowhere does the tie between the people on both sides of the Atlantic feel more intimate as in the World War II cemeteries.

In today’s Europe, the need for such a partner remains. At Margraten that August morning, I spoke with a Dutch woman who’d come to visit the cemetery with her young son. He was learning at school about “the problems in the world,” she explained. He’s a little bit nervous, she said, about what would happen “if the Russians come.” She gestured at the rows of graves all around her: “So it’s very important to see everything.”

My son got blown up in Afghanistan and is banged up in lots of other ways.

I have an Uncle who was blown up in Europe with a lot more visible wounds.

I have a Great Uncle who was shot in France.

My Great Grand Father had a confederate bullet in his chest from the day he was shot in Virginia in 1862 until the day he died, 50 years later.

I take my hat off to their service and to all veterans on this day.

On Veterans Day it it good to remember what Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg.

 It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

As Mr. Darmen writes: But in their beauty, ambition and scale, the cemeteries have also always sent a message to Europeans, a reminder of the costs Americans were willing to pay to ensure the cause of liberty in the world.