"Davey Crockett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:(TritonRider) said:http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/mccrae
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Hmm. I was just browsing ''In Flanders Fields'' the book by Norman
Jorgensen.
And for those curious about poems and poppies :
On August 4, 1914, Canada declared war on Germany. Within three weeks,
45,000 Canadians had rushed to join up. John McCrae was among them. He was
appointed brigade-surgeon to the First Brigade of the Canadian Forces
Artillery with the rank of Major and second-in-command.
Just before his departure, he wrote to a friend:
It is a terrible state of affairs, and I am going because I think every
bachelor, especially if he has experience of war, ought to go. I am really
rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience.
(Prescott. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae, p. 77)
He took with him a horse named Bonfire, a gift from a friend. Later, John
McCrae sent his young nieces and nephews letters supposedly written by
Bonfire and signed with a hoof print.
In April 1915, John McCrae was in the trenches near Ypres, Belgium, in the
area traditionally called Flanders. Some of the heaviest fighting of the
First World War took place there during that was known as the Second Battle
of Ypres.
On April 22, the Germans used deadly chlorine gas against Allied troops in a
desperate attempt to break the stalemate. Despite the debilitating effects
of the gas, Canadian soldiers fought relentlessly and held the line for
another 16 days.
In the trenches, John McCrae tended hundreds of wounded soldiers every day.
He was surrounded by the dead and the dying. In a letter to his mother, he
wrote of the Battle of Ypres.
The general impression in my mind is of a nightmare. We have been in the
most bitter of fights. For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us
have had our clothes off, nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all
that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty
seconds ..... And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of
the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line
should give way.(Prescott. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae, p.
98)
The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae's closest friends was
killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden
cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses
marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or any of the others who
had died, John McCrae gave them a voice through his poem. It was the second
last poem he was to write.
Soon after it was written, he was transferred to No. 3 (McGill) Canadian
General Hospital in France where he was Chief of Medical Services. The
hospital was housed in huge tents at Dannes-Cammiers until cold wet weather
forced a move to the site of the ruins of the Jesuit College at Boulogne.
When the hospital opened its doors in February 1916, it was a 1,560-bed
facility covering 26 acres. Here the wounded were brought from the Battle of
the Somme, the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the third Battle of Ypres and from
Arras and Passchendaele.
www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/mccrae/flanders
