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.
by John McCrae (3 May 1915, Second Battle of Ypres)
Flanders Fields was a battle region in the First World War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918. Roughly a million soldiers from more than fifty different nations were wounded, went missing, or were killed in action in Flanders Fields. The region now makes up the northern part of the country of Belgium, and still bears witness to history in its many monuments, museums, and cemeteries, and in the innumerable stories of individual lives that were dramatically changed.
John McCrae was born on 30 November 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He became a writer, a poet, a physician, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. John McCrae passed on at 45 years of age on 28 January 1918 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
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.
by John McCrae (3 May 1915, Second Battle of Ypres)
Flanders Fields was a battle region in the First World War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918. Roughly a million soldiers from more than fifty different nations were wounded, went missing, or were killed in action in Flanders Fields. The region now makes up the northern part of the country of Belgium, and still bears witness to history in its many monuments, museums, and cemeteries, and in the innumerable stories of individual lives that were dramatically changed.
John McCrae was born on 30 November 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He became a writer, a poet, a physician, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. John McCrae passed on at 45 years of age on 28 January 1918 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
Poppies are plants with large bright-red flowers, and were among the first plants to regrow after the ground was torn apart by war and then disturbed again by the making of the final resting places of the war casualties.
