“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. Although Major John McCrae 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. In just the few weeks he had been there, Major 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 been on the faculty of  McGill University since graduating from the University of Toronto in 1900, 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 in absence of a chaplain, McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony. The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae and stopped to watch. 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 he 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.

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

In Flander’s 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.

On Veteran’s Day, 11-11-07, we honor our national heroes: the men and women of the American Armed Forces who serve their country and their countrymen down through the history of our great nation. To them and their glorious ranks, we pay tribute and give thanks for the lives, past present and future, lived and laid down on the battlefield in the name of Duty, Honor, Country.

We do not forget them or their families, where valor proudly sleeps, for “greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friends.” We recall the words of Isaiah in his book chapter 11 verse 11: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”

From America to the ends of the earth we remember our patriots and bless the banner of liberty they raise high. Our prayer today is that heaven will water those seeds sown in the soil of nations around the world and from that blood, from their sweat, from those tears will spring forth a harvest of righteousness in the fruit of a goodly inheritance that their heirs, our children and grandchildren, may enjoy. May valor arise and shine in the heirs of America’s veteran’s.

Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, Coastguards, high rank to private, we recognize that our lives and the free and blessed state of our nation would not be thus if you had not toiled or if you had not made the ultimate sacrifice. Together with our countrymen and President we pause and reflect on all we owe to those who have taken our place and defended the high ideals of America on battlefields around the world in times past and present. Humbly and proudly we say “Thank You”. Thank God for you. Thank you to your families. “Thank You, American Serviceman. Thank You American Servicewoman.”

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