Remembrance Day

Posts: 484 · Posted: 11.11.2007, 23:02

As we remember the brave young men and women that served our countries in both world wars, and the Korean war, Vietnam and continue to serve to this day. They fought for our freedom, and to return freedom to people from other nations.
May they Rest in Peace !!
Spookth

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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.

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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.

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.

This is from the Arlington National Cemeteries website!!

Posts: 243 · Posted: 12.11.2007, 01:13

Very thoughtful spookth.

Some of the live footage I've seen from world war one often haunts me.

There was a picture of what the soldiers faced when they went, ' Over the top.'
In front of them was the red sparks caused by the enemy's gunfire. Only it wasn't dotted about here and there. It was one huge red mass.
There was no way that anyone could have survived, it was certain death.
A particular haunting piece of footage captures the moments just before the soldiers go over the top.
They are lined up a few feet from the top of the trench, with their bayonets fitted, and their commanding officer stood behind them with only a pistol in his hand.
The officer then gives the signal to charge, only as he runs up the trench wall, and is clearly over the top well before any of his men.
It is, for me, unimaginable, and so very, very haunting

Posts: 2913 · Posted: 14.11.2007, 13:26

Thank you very much, Spookth, for your worthy contribution to our site.

I am ashamed I did not think of some tribute myself to post.

But, as always, wherever I stumble or fall, there is always a member who arises to the occasion and makes everthing okay. Sometimes more than okay, as in this case, where I could in no way have done as well.

Again I thank you. All together, we get done what needs to be done!

Thanks to my great members!

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