In Flanders Fields

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.

Tread softly here! Go reverently and slow!

You let your soul go down upon its knees

And with bowed head, and heart abased strive hard

To grasp the future gain in the sore loss!

For not one foot of this dank sod but drank

Its surfeit of the blood of gallant men.

Who for their faith their hope - for life and liberty

Here made the sacrifice - here gave their lives

And gave right willingly - for you and me.

From this vast altar-pile the souls of men

Sped up to God in countless multitudes.

On this grim cratered ridge they gave their all.

And giving won.

The peace of Heaven and immortality

Our hearts go out to them in boundless gratitude.

If ours - then God's for His vast charity

All sees, all knows, all comprehends - save bounds

He has repaid their sacrifice - and we - ?

God help us if we fail to pay our debt

In fullest full and all unstintingly!

John Oxenham:, Beaumont-Hamel Memorial Park

In Flanders Fields

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 falling 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.

John McCrae

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. Here is the story of the making of that poem:

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 Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

Sickened by what he had seen during the Boer War, John McCrae nevertheless signed up in August 1914, and headed for France with his horse, Bonfire, in tow. He would have found few opportunities for riding in that hell on earth. Knee deep in mud and freezing water, men's feet rotted where they stood, waiting for the next attack of gas to insinuate its way down the trenches, or the signal to go "over the top", often into direct machine gun fire.

McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" the day after presiding at the funeral of a friend and former student.

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."

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 1915. 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.

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 McCrae 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. 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."

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.

McCrae was to number among the 9,000,000 fatalities that vicious, fratricidal war of attrition would claim. His asthmatic condition, exacerbated by poison gas, eventually led to pneumonia and meningitis, and his death in January of 1918.

I went to the University of Guelph - in Guelph, Ontario where John McCrae was raised and on this day about 20 years ago my wife and I watched the Veteran's Parade wind through town from our second story apartment window.

It was a Remembrance Day we will never forget as we observed a Veteran collapse and die right in front of us. My wife cried as the scene was unfolding. I will never forget that day because it was on November 11th - known as Remembrance Day for us Canadian's.

STATISTICS

Number of Canadians in Service

South Africa (1899-1902) - approximately 7,000
World War I (1914-1918) - 628,736 (includes 4,518 women)
World War II (1939-1945) - 1,081,865 (includes 49,963 women)
Korean War (1950-1953) - 26,791
Gulf War (1991) - 4,074 (includes 237 women)

Canadian Casualties

South Africa (1899-1902) - 267 dead
World War I (1914-1918) - 66,573 dead
World War II (1939-1945) - 44,927 dead (includes 73 women)
Korean War (1950-1953) - 516 dead
Gulf War (1991) - 0 combat casualties

Canadians Wounded

South Africa (1899-1902) - no record available
World War I (1914-1918) - 138,166
World War II (1939-1945) - 53,145 (includes 19 women)
Korean War (1950-1953) - 1,558
Gulf War (1991) - 0 combat wounded

Canadian Prisoners of War

South Africa (1899-1902) - no record available
World War I (1914-1918) - 2,818
World War II (1939-1945) - 8,271
Korean War (1950-1953) - 33
Gulf War (1991) - 0

Statistics for the Colony of Newfoundland prior to 1949

World War I (1914-1918)
- 16,922 served
- 1,593 died
- wounded unknown
- 180 Pows

World War II (1939-1945)
- 19,460 served
- 704 died
- wounded unknown
- POWs unknown

Canadian Merchant Navy Statistics
1,400 served on the original 37 Canadian ships registered at the start of World War I
14, 000 served on registered ships during World War II
175 died by enemy action in World War I
1,146 died by enemy action in World War II
1,059 names on the Halifax Monument (place of burial unknown)

Canadian Peacekeepers

More than 125,000 have served on missions since 1948
More than 115 have died while on missions

World War II Service Intake by Province and Sex

P.E.I. 9,309 Que. 176,441 Sask./ N .W.T. 80,605
N.S. 59,355 Ont. 398,808 Alta. 77,703
N.B. 45,137 Man. 76,444 B.C / Yuk. 90,976

Outside of Canada Volunteers 17,124

Males 1,031,902
Females 49,963
TOTAL 1,081,865

Canadians on NATO duty

It is estimated that more than 136,000 Canadians served on the sea, on land and in the air with NATO forces from 1952 to 1994. Of these more than 780 died while on duty during this 42 year period.

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