Mack
Welford reminds us of the history behind the poem IN FLANDERS
FIELDS. This information was updated in 2009:
McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the
most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible
battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the
making of that poem:
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South
African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and
the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing
station to last him a lifetime.
As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae,
who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University
of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians,
British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.
It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later
wrote of it: "I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations
of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day
if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have
folded our hands and said it could not have been done."
One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former
student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2
May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery
outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral
ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the
dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of
Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger
to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up
in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious
rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year
old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The
major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the
sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as
we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time,
his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."
When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson
and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved
by what he read:
"The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of
us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were
being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that
time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description
of the scene."
In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae
tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to
newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch
published it on 8 December 1915.
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel
John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the
poppies blow
Between the crosses row
on row,
That make our place; and
in the sky
The larks, still bravely
singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the
guns below.
We are the Dead. Short
days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw
sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and
now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with
the foe:
To you from failing hands
we throw
The torch; be yours to
hold it high.
If ye break faith with us
who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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