Remembrance Day - 'In Flanders Fields.'

For Remembrance Day 2007, 'In Flanders Fields' by John McCrae:

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.

John McCrae's grave in Wimereux Cemetery, France.


John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario and attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute. He then studied medicine on a scholarship at the University of Toronto. While attending the university he joined the Zeta Psi Fraternity (Theta Xi chapter; class of 1894) and published his first poems. He was a member of The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada while studying at the University of Toronto, during which time he was promoted to Captain.

McCrae served in the artillery during the Second Boer War, and upon his return was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911 (although he also taught at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec). In 1910, he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay.

At the start of the war McCrae was appointed as a field surgeon in the Canadian artillery and was in charge of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. The poem ‘In Flanders fields’ was written upon a scrap of paper upon the back of Colonel Cosgrave, in the trenches during a lull in the bombings. On May 3, 1915, after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before (as recited to his grandson). The poem was first published on December 8, that year in Punch magazine, London


From June 1, 1915 McCrae was ordered away from the artillery to set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Dannes-Camiers near Boulogne-sur-Mer, northern France. C.L.C. Allinson reported that McCrae "most unmilitarily told [me] what he thought of being transferred to the medicals and being pulled away from his beloved guns. His last words to me were: 'Allinson, all the goddam doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and more fighting men.'"

'In Flanders Fields' appeared anonymously in Punch on 8 December 1915, but in the index to that year McCrae was named as the author. The verses swiftly became one of the most popular poems of the war, used in countless fund-raising campaigns and frequently translated (a Latin version begins In agro belgico...). 'In Flanders Fields' was also extensively printed in the USA, which was contemplating joining the war, alongside a 'reply' by R. W. Lillard, ("...Fear not that you have died for naught, The torch ye threw to us we caught...").

In late January 1918, while still commanding No 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne, McCrae died of pneumonia. He died on January 28, 1918, and was buried with full honours in Wimereux Cemetery, just a couple of kilometres up the coast from Boulogne. McCrae's horse, "Bonfire", led the procession, his master's riding boots reversed in the stirrups. McCrae's gravestone is placed flat, as are all the others, because of the sandy soil.