Our first stop on the Flanders Fields' tour was a British cemetery called Essex Farm, where I noticed from the bus a sign planted at the outside boundary. Who is John McCrae? I wondered, even though I soon discovered that I had already heard about his famous poem.
Essex Farm received its name from a small cottage which stood nearby. We stepped into the bunkers which comprised dressing stations used from April 1915 to August 1917. Soldiers were brought here for treatment and if they died, Essex Farm was their final resting place. Burials and commemorations of the over 1,200 servicemen honored here--103 are unidentified--were made without a definite plan.
Physician and Army Medical Corps Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae volunteered, at age 41, for his second tour of duty in the Canadian military to join a fighting unit as a gunner and medical officer. Son of a military leader, he was raised to believe in duty to his country and fought in the second battle of Ypres where the Germans launched one of the first chemical attacks (chlorine gas) in the history of war.
Fortunately, the Germans were unable to break though the Canadian line, which held for over two weeks. McCrae described the battle in a letter to his mother as a "nightmare." Alexis Helmer, a close friend, was killed during it and McCrae performed the burial service in 1915, which inspired him to write his poem.
McCrae noticed at the burial how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance at this site. As with his earlier poems, "In Flanders Fields" continued his preoccupation with death, the struggle of life, and the peace that follows. It was written from the point of view of the deceased, speaking of their sacrifice and commanding the living to press on.
Legend has it that fellow soldiers retrieved the poem after McCrae, initially unsatisfied with his work, discarded it. He was finally convinced to submit it for publication, which happened on December 8, 1915 in a London-based magazine called "Punch."
As one of the most popular and quoted poems from the war, parts were used in propaganda efforts and appeals to recruit soldiers and to raise money selling war bonds. The poem was written early in the conflict, before the romanticism of war turned to bitterness and disillusion for soldiers and civilians alike.
Its references to red poppies resulted in one of the world's most recognized memorial symbols for all soldiers who have died in combat. Interestingly, poppies have been associated with war since the Napoleonic Wars when a writer then also noted how poppies grew over the graves of soldiers. The damage done to the Flanders' landscape during the fighting in Belgium greatly increased the lime content in the soil, leaving the poppy as one of the few plants able to grow in the region.
It was an American professor, Moina Michael, who resolved at the war's conclusion in 1918 to wear a red poppy year-round to honor the soldiers lost in war. Her poem, "We Shall Keep the Faith," was a response to McCrae's and she distributed silk poppies to her peers in a campaign to have it adopted as the American Legion's official symbol of remembrance. This tribute was soon adopted by the French, the British Empire, Canada, South Africa, Austria, and New Zealand.
Written as a rondeau, a form of French poetry, it is one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and 15th centuries. Here is the first chapter:
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.
By John McCrae
After the war, McCrae was stationed in Boulogne, France, where he was promoted and placed in charge of medicine at the Canadian General Hospital. Promoted to Colonel in 1918 and named Consulting Physician to the British Armies in France, he contacted pneumonia which led to cerebral meningitis. He died in December 1918 at the military hospital in Wimereux, France and was buried there with full military honors.
NOTE: The grave of McCrae's friend, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was lost in subsequent fighting and is today marked among the names of the missing on the Menin Gate in Ypres.
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