[2020-11-11] Remembrance Day

Today, in honour of Remembrance Day, I read stories of veterans who had served in various capacities in different wars. By far the most touching was the story of Canadian John McCrae, author of "In Flanders Fields."

I either never learned his story or forgot it from my youth. So I appreciated reading Charles Magill's The Story Behind "In Flanders Fields" in Reader's Digest Canada.

McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario, on November 30, 1872. His mother liked to read poetry to her children.

He attended the University of Toronto, where, in 1890, he lost his girlfriend, Alice McRae, who died of typhoid fever. He would never marry.

In 1899, McCrae began a fellowship in pathology at Montreal's McGill University. Soon after, however, he volunteered to fight in the Boer War in South Africa; he served as a lieutenant with an artillery division. He returned to Montreal in 1901 where he worked as a resident assistant pathologist at the Montreal General Hospital. He was described as well liked, with an ineffable smile, and was said to have had a story for every occasion.

In 1914, as the First World War began, McCrae once again offered his services. He took up the role of surgeon to the 1st Brigade of the Canadian Corps Artillery as second in command and with the rank of major. No stranger to war, McCrae wrote to his sister:

"Out on the awful old trail again! And with very mixed feelings, but some determination."

Originally posted to England, McCrae would later be deployed with his unit to Ypres Salient in Belgium. On May 2, 1915, he wrote to his mother:

"Heavy gunfire again this morning. Lieutenant H. was killed at the guns. I said the Committal Service over him as well as I could from memory. A soldier’s death!"

Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was a close friend of McCrae's. Early the following morning, McCrae found himself sitting near his field dressing station. He could see scarlet poppies between the white crosses in a nearby cemetery, and he could hear larks singing between the sounds of gunfire. It was in this setting that McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields," which Magill called "the most famous poem of the Great War—perhaps of any war."

McCrae wrote:

"I saw all the tragedies of war enacted. A wagon, or a bunch of horses or a stray man, would get there just in time for a shell. One could see the absolute knockout; or worse yet, at night one could hear the tragedy, a horse’s scream or the man’s moan."

McCrae submitted "In Flanders Fields" to the British weekly magazine The Spectator, which rejected it. The poem was published anonymously by Punch, a British satirical magazine.

Soldiers and civilians embraced the poem. McCrae's friend and colleague Andrew Macphail wrote:

"The soldiers have learned it with their hearts, which is quite a different thing from committing to memory. It circulates, as a song should circulate, by the living word of mouth, not by printed characters."

The poem was reprinted and circulated widely in the British Empire and the United States.

But the tragedies at Ypres that inspired the poem would alter McCrae irreparably. John F. Prescott, author of McCrae's 1985 biography, wrote:

"He was never again the optimistic man with the infectious smile. His friends spoke of his change in temperament in subdued voices, feeling, as one said, that an icon had been broken."

On January 24, 1918, McCrae was appointed consulting physician to the British armies in France. He would not, however, take up that role—a first for a Canadian—as he died just four days later of double pneumonia and meningitis.

Memorial services were held in McCrae's honour. McGill University dedicated a stained-glass window to him with the inscription "Pathologist, Poet, Soldier, Physician, a man among men." And among the many tributes, Stephen Leacock wrote:

"John McCrae’s poem, ‘In Flanders Fields,’ will live as long as the memory of the heroic struggle of the Canadians that formed its inspiration."

Inspired by McCrae's poem, the poppy has become a symbol of remembrance of fallen soldiers around the world.

McCrae likely never imagined that his poem would have the impact that it would go on to have. That is the thing about telling a story. One never knows where that story will end up or what it will mean to a reader—in the moment or even many years later. That is an inspiring legacy.