[1stPickSites] Lest We Forget
- From: "Mike" <mikebike@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: 1stPickSites@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 08:25:37 -0800
November the 11 is a special day for the people of all nations to remember
and respect all those who lost their lives during the conflicts of battle.
Please take a moment to honor them.
Is It Nothing to You? Lest We Forget
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Street/8986/rem_day.html
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...
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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.
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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, saw dawn, felt sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up your 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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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.
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)
++ There is more on the web site.
Mike ~ one of the Moderators
It is a good day if I learned something new.
Editor MikesWhatsNews http://www.mwn.ca/
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