In Flanders Field

[Karl-G]

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 mark 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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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.

[bigguyinpasadena]

Thank you for the poignant poem Karl-G.

I think Jacques Brel put it to music,I faintly remember it being performed-and there was not a dry eye in the house.

So when you are looking at the lovely young men in Montreal and Ft.Lauderdale please remember there are monsters in this country who would make them into cannon fodder so that they can make a buck.

[Guest Fisher]

A very poignant poem ... one of my favorites.

 

Another excellent/tragic WWI poem is Dulce Et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen. Before the war he was a teacher/poet

He enlisted in the British Army, was wounded in early 1917,

Returned to the front 1-1/2 years later and was killed

(at age 25) seven days before the armistice. His parents

were notified of his death on Nov 11, 1918 as the church

bells were ringing celebrating the end of the war.

 

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

 

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

 

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

 

The last line is taken from the Roman poet Horace.

It translates from the latin to "Sweet and fitting

it is to die for one's country"

 

As a veteran, I ask members of the board to remember the young

soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq for Bush's lie.

 

- Fisher

[Karl-G]

Very powerful and moving. Thank you.

[+ glutes]

RE: In Flanders Field, Bless Our Vets!

 

Not try to hijack this thread, but look at the lyrics of John Fogertys' latest song "Deja Vu (all over again)":

 

 

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio

Did you try to read the writing on the wall

Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before

It's like Deja Vu all over again

 

Day by day I hear the voices rising

Started with a whisper like it did before

Day by day we count the dead and dying

Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score

 

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio

Could your eyes believe the writing on the wall

Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before

It's like Deja Vu all over again

 

One by one I see the old ghosts rising

Stumblin' 'cross Big Muddy

Where the light gets dim

Day after day another Momma's crying

She's lost her precious child

To a war that has no end

 

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio

Did you stop to read the writing at The Wall

Did that voice inside you say

I've seen this all before

It's like Deja Vu all over again

It's like Deja Vu all over again