My uncle Willy was killed at Passchendaele in 1917 serving
with the Australians in the AIF. His name is on the Menin Gate.
I thought I would post this article which I snatched off the
newsgroups many years ago. Uncle Willy signed up at Dubba
where he had emigrated to his uncle's farm. His uncle had
served in the South African Wars.




Excerpt from "Welcome to Flanders Fields - The Great Canadian Battle
of the Great War : Ypres, 1915", by Daniel G. Dancocks,
McClelland and Stewart (Toronto, Canada), 1988.

pages 250,251 - Epilogue

"In Flanders Fields"

``Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South
African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams,
and the blood here, and Maj. John McCrae had seen and heard enough in
his dressing station to last him a lifetime.  As a surgeon attached to the
1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill
faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent
seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French,
and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

  It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible.  McCrae later
wrote of it:

        I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that
        seventeen days .... Seventeen days of Hades!  At the end of the first
        day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we
        would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done (1).

  One death particularly affected McCrae.  A young friend and former student,
Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May.
Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside
McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony
in the absence of the chaplain.

  The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing
station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres,
McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem.  The major was no stranger
to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in
the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious
rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook (2).

  A young soldier watched him write it.  Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year
old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae.
The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the
sergeant-major stood there quietly.  "His face was very tired but calm
as we wrote," Allinson recalled.  "He looked around from time to time,
his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."  When he finished five minutes later,
he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad
to the young NCO.  Allinson was moved by what he read:

        The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front
        of us both.
          The word blow was not used in the first line though it was used
        later when the poem later appeared in Punch.  But it was used in
        the second last line.  He used the word blow in that line because the
        poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind.
          It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be
        published.  It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene (3).

In fact, it was very nearly not published.  Dissatisfied with it, McCrae
tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer -- either Lt.-Col. Edward Morrison,
the former Ottawa newspaper editor who commanded the 1st Brigade of
artillery (4), or Lt.-Col. J.M. Elder (5), depending on which source is
consulted -- retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England.
"The Spectator," in London, rejected it, but "Punch" published it on
8 December 1915.

  McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most
memorable war poems ever written.  It is a lasting legacy of the terrible
battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

                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, saw dawn, felt sunset glow,
                Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
                        In Flanders fields.

                Take up your 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.''

(1) Bassett, John. page 44, "John McCrae." Markham:Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1984.

(2) Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada,
    MG30 E209, biographical note by Gertrude Hickmore.

(3) Mathieson, William D. page 264. "My Grandfather's War."
    Toronto:Macmillan, 1981.

(4) Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada,
    MG30 EI33, volume 4, "Origin of `In Flanders Fields.'"

(5) "Canadian Daily Record," 5/3/19.

Written May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres, by Maj. (Dr.)
(later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade.
Published in "Punch", December 8, 1915

Is It Nothing To You?   LEST WE FORGET ...


Douglas Clark, Bath, England           mailto: [log in to unmask]
Lynx: Poetry from Bath  ..........  http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html