page_title: John McCrae
section_title: "In Flanders Fields"
hierarchical_section_title: John McCrae / "In Flanders Fields"
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Monument "In Flanders Fields" op de kanaalsite John McCrae English: "In Flanders Fields" memorial on the war site John McCrae. Boezinge, Ieper, West Flanders, Belgium
context_page_description: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I, and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields". McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war.
context_section_description: A collection of his poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1918), was published after his death.
      "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.
                               –John McCrae
  
  Though various legends have developed as to the inspiration for the poem, the most commonly held belief is that McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" on May 3, 1915, the day after presiding over the funeral and burial of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who had been killed during the Second Battle of Ypres. The poem was written as he sat upon the back of a medical field ambulance near an advance dressing post at Essex Farm, just north of Ypres. The poppy, which was a central feature of the poem, grew in great numbers in the spoiled earth of the battlefields and cemeteries of Flanders. An article by Veteran's Administration Canada provides this account:
  The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae's closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves.
   
  The Canadian government has placed a memorial to John McCrae that features "In Flanders Fields" at the site of the dressing station which sits beside the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Essex Farm Cemetery. The Belgian government has named this site the "John McCrae Memorial Site".
caption: "In Flanders Fields" memorial on the John McCrae Memorial Site, Boezinge, Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium
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