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| | In Memoriam
PVT. CORNELIUS BARKEMA
Died October 17, 1918
Camp Coetquidan, France
"Our Dead Overseas"
(By special permission of the author, Edwin Markham)
They sleep-they took the chance
In Italy, in Belgium, in France.
For us they gave their youth to its last breath-
For they plunged on into the gulf of death.
With high heroic heart,
They did their valiant part.
They gave the grace and glory of their youth
To lie in heaps uncouth.
They turned from these bright skies
To lie with dust and silence on their eyes.
Yet they have wages that we know not of-
Wages of honor and immortal love.
For they went down only to live again
In the eternal memory of men-
To be warm pulse-beats in the greatening soul
That drives the blind world onward to her goal.
They are not dead; life's flag is never furled;
They passed from world to world.
Their bodies sleep, but in some nobler land.
Their spirits march under a new command.
New joys await them there.
In hero heavens wrapt in immortal air.
Rejoice for them, rejoice;
They made the nobler choice.
How shall we honor their deed-
How speak our praise of this immortal breed?
Only by living nobly as they died-
Toiling for Truth denied.
Loyal to something bigger than we are-
Something that swings the spirit to a star.
PVT. CORNELIUS BARKEMA
Serial No. 2,048,210
331 Columbia Ave., Holland, Mich.
Private Barkema was inducted November 24, 1917, at Camp Custer.
While in training at Coetquidan, Private Barkema was taken ill on October 13, 1918, and was taken to Hospital No. 15. Four days later, October 17th, he succumbed to broncho-pneumonia at 8:35 p.m.
In the sang froid manner in which soldiers treat all things serious, his comrades had jokingly talked with him just before he was sent to the hospital. The intelligence of his death came to them as a distinct shock. The training at that time was so intensive that the individual was lost sight of, but this made the boys pause and note that perhaps this comrade had only preceded them across the line just a little while before.
It has been said that the twin peaks of human destiny are Life and Death. Sometimes the range between is long, but in the case of our comrade the flush of sunrise yet brightened both peaks when the light of life set. |