Memorial Day Weekend

Because I spotlighted a friend from the north yesterday, and because it's Memorial Day Weekend and one of my favorite poems speaks to our responsibility to always remember the sacrifices others make for our freedoms and to act to continue to protect them, I'm spotlighting that work of another Canadian here today.

Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae was a Canadian physician serving with the 1st Field Artillery Brigade of the Canadian Army during World War I. The battle at the Ypres salient was fought to prevent German troops from overrunning that area of Belgium. The Allied troops were in a terribly dangerous position, and seventeen hellish days of battle resulted in high casualties and injuries that then-Major McCrae had to treat. After witnessing the death of a young friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, and presiding over his funeral service due to the absence of a chaplain, Dr. McCrae sat on the back of an ambulance and spent twenty minutes of his precious rest time penning the fifteen lines that became one of the most famous poems of World War I. Although Dr. McCrae discarded the poem, a fellow officer rescued it and submitted it to London newspapers. The Spectator rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.

Lest we forget:

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

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.