Veterans Day

[ReignetteC]

Thomas,

"In Flanders Fields" is most fitting on this, the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. Dr. John McCrae, a Canadian physician who served as a brigade-surgeon during WWI, composed the poem in 1915. The following is from poets.org:

In April 1915, McCrae was stationed in the trenches near Ypres, Belgium, in an area known as Flanders, during the bloody Second Battle of Ypres. In the midst of the tragic warfare, McCrae’s friend, twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed by artillery fire and buried in a makeshift grave. The following day, McCrae, after seeing the field of makeshift graves blooming with wild poppies, wrote his famous poem “In Flanders Fields,” which would be the second-to-last poem he would ever write. It was published in England’s Punch magazine in December 1915 and was later included in the posthumous collection In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919).

The poem is often associated with Memorial Day and the poppy. Canadian students are know to recite this poem annually.