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

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. 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 it¹:

"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. 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 notebook².

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 read³:

" 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. "

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 artillery⁴, or Lt.-Col. J.M. Elder⁵, 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

Doctor Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade wrote this poem on May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres. The poem was later published in "Punch", December 8, 1915.

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.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

For our king and our country, and the promise of glory
We came from Kingston and Brighton to fight on the front lines
Just lads from the farms and boys from the cities
Not meant to be soldiers, we lay in the trenches
We'd face the fighting with a smile ... or so we said
If only we had known what danger lay ahead

The sky turned to grey as we went into battle
On the fields of Europe young men were fallin'
I'll be back for you someday - it won't be long
If I can just hold on `til the bloody war is over

The guns will be silent - on Remembrance Day
There'll be no more fighting - on Remembrance Day

By October of `18 Cambrai had fallen
Soon the war would be over and we'd be returning
Don't forget me while I'm gone far away
Well, it won't be long `til I'm back there in your arms again

The guns will be silent - on Remembrance Day
There'll be no more fighting - on Remembrance Day

One day soon I don't know when
You know we'll all be free and the bells of peace will ring again
The time will come for you and me
We'll be going home when this bloody war has ended

The guns will be silent - on Remembrance Day
We'll all say a prayer - on Remembrance Day

... on Remembrance Day ...
... say a little prayer ...
... on Remembrance Day ...

Well, the guns will be silent
There'll be no more fighting
We'll lay down our weapons
On Remembrance Day

... on Remembrance Day ...

(Bryan Adams, "Into the Fire", A&M 1987)

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Poppy Campaign Information (Card)
(The Royal Canadian Legion)

World War I:

1.   628,736 Canadians served.
2.   66,573 died and 138,166 were wounded.
3.   2,818 were taken prisoner of war.
4.   175 merchant seamen died by enemy action.

World War II:

1.   1,031,902 Canadian men and 49,963 Canadian women served.
2.   44,927 died and 43,145 were wounded.
3.   8,271 were taken prisoner of war.
4.   1,146 merchant seamen died by enemy action.

Korea:

1.   26,791 Canadians served.
2.   516 died and 1,558 were wounded.
3.   33 were taken prisoner of war.

The Gulf War:

1.   3,837 Canadian men and 237 Canadian women served.
2.   There were no Canadian casualties or prisoners of war during the Gulf War.

Sources: Department of National Defence; Veterans Affairs Canada. Queries regarding these statistics shuld be referred to these departments. March 1992.

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