Armistice Day 2010

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae MD. [1872 -1918].

Lt Col McCrae, a Canadian doctor, sat down and wrote his famous poem shortly after the death of one of his closest friends, Lt Alex Helmer at Ypres on 3rd May 1915. Dr McCrae had tried in vain to save him, but his wounds proved fatal. “In Flanders Fields” became one of the most famous First World War poems, somehow encapsulating the tragic, sad, pointlessness of it all.

The sadness was compounded when Dr McCrae who had saved hundreds of  lives, tragically lost his own life to pneumonia in January 1918, just months before the end of the war. He was buried with full military honours in Wimereux Cemetary a couple of kilometres outside Boulogne.  His was a great and noble soul.

During the five years I lived in Belgium, I’d sometimes drive to Ypres after a bad day in the office to watch the daily six o’clock memorial ceremony at the Menin Gate [Meenenporte].  It never failed to put things in perspective.........

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