ount of a march,
which was "without exception the hardest he had ever made" --
"20 kilometers through the blazing sun and in a cloud of dust.
Something around 30 kilograms on the back. About 50 per cent dropped
by the way. By making a supreme effort, I managed to get in at the finish,
with the fifteen men that were all that was left of the section."
He now knew that the great offensive was imminent. "The situation,"
he wrote, "is most interesting and exciting, but I am not at liberty
to say anything about it. My greatest preoccupation now
is whether this affair is coming off before or after the 4th of July.
The indications are that it is going to break very soon.
In that case nothing doing in the way of permission.
But I still have hopes of getting in."

His hopes of getting to Paris were frustrated, as were all his other hopes
save one--the hope of

That rare privilege of dying well.

On July 1st, the great advance began. At six in the evening of July 4th,
the Legion was ordered to clear the enemy out of the village
of Belloy-en-Santerre. Alan Seeger advanced in the first rush,
and his squad was enfiladed by the fire of six German machine guns,
concealed in a hollow way. Most of them went down, and Alan among them --
wounded in several places. But the following waves of attack
were more fortunate. As his comrades came up to him,
Alan cheered them on; and as they left him behind,
they heard him singing a marching-song in English: --

Accents of ours were in the fierce melee.

They took the village, they drove the invaders out;
but for some reason unknown--perhaps a very good one --
the battlefield was left unvisited that night. Next morning,
Alan Seeger lay dead.

There is little to add. He wrote his own best epitaph in the "Ode": --

And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,
When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,
And on the tangled wires
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,
Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: --
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops,
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.

His death was briefly noticed in one or two French papers.
The 'Matin' published a translation of part of the poem, "Champagne, 1914-15",
and remarked that "Cyrano de Bergerac would have signed it."
But France had no time, even if she had had the knowledge,
to realize