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Canadian poet, artilleryman, and medical officer Lt. Colonel John McCrae.
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It’s only been three days since I
wrapped up the National Poetry Month
series, but here I am already, back to verse. This time it is history that that, in
the immortal words of Sonny Corleone
“keeps pulling me back in.”
It was 105 years ago today during World War I that Major John McCrae, a gunnery
and medical officer of a front
line Canadian regiment scribbled the
first draft of the poem while
sitting in the back of an ambulance in
Flanders, the Dutch speaking region of northern Belgium. It was just after
the long and bitter 17 day Second Battle
of the Ypres during which the Germans
unleashed one of the first mass uses
of poisonous chlorine gas of the war
on Canadian positions resulting in heavy and gruesome casualties and one of those battles in the Great War that shattered
expectations on all sides of a gallant
and romantic display of national glory. Nearly exhausted from the long battle during
which he had never once had a chance to even change his clothes, McCrae had
just presided at the burial of one of his closest friends, Alexis Helmer alongside hundreds of
other victims of the fighting. It was a
large, open flat meadow and in the spring profusions of bright poppies
bloomed between and among the newly dug graves.
With the scene still before him,
McCrae sat in the ambulance that had delivered the body of his friend and
scribbled a poem. He lent it to regimental Sargent Major Cyril Allinson and the man was moved to tears. McCrae, no an amateur but a serious and accomplished
poet with extensive publication
back home in Canada, was not satisfied with the work. He crumpled
the paper and tossed it aside. Allinson
retrieved the page and later convinced McCrae to submit it to publication.
McCrae relented, but spent weeks tinkering with and revising the poem before sending it off to The Spectator, London’s leading
political and literary weekly. But the paper,
then a Liberal Party voice and
strong supporter of the Prime Minister
H. H. Asquith, who had once been an editor,
rejected it. Perhaps they thought that the theme of mass sacrifice was too depressing and could undermine moral despite the patriotic exhortation with which it ended. McCrae’s second submission, to the more
satirical Punch succeeded and it was published without attribution on
December 8, 1915.
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The poem and poppy images were widely used in Allied propaganda like this Canadian Bond drive poster.
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The poem grabbed the immediate
attention of the British public and
it was widely reprinted. The government,
recognizing its power, began using it as a recruiting
tool. This was even more true back
home in Canada. Posters featuring the lines from the poem
and images of poppy fields were used for both recruiting and War
Bond sales. The Unionist Party used it in its campaign
for re-election in 1916 against the French speaking Quebecois who opposed conscription.
In the United States the poem was used by those, like Theodore Roosevelt, who were eager to get the country into the war
on the Allied side. After President
Woodrow Wilson was finally convinced to call for a declaration of War in 1917 U.S.
propagandists also used the poem for
recruitment.
John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario on November 30,
1872. The grandson of Scottish immigrants, his father, Lieutenant Colonel David McCrae, was a professional soldier and strong Empire loyalist. He attended high school at Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute
where he also rose to captain in the
corps of cadets. After graduation he joined the Army and
trained in gunnery at Royal Military
College of Canada in Kingston,
Ontario.
Placed on reserve status, McCrae worked in 1894 as a Master of English and Mathematics at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph before enrolling at the University
of Toronto to complete his B.A. and
to study medicine. His first poems were published while at
the University.
After graduation from Medical School in 1898 he served his residency at Toronto General Hospital, and then in 1899, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore,
Maryland.
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Officers of the 1st
Brigade Royal Canadian Field Artillery, circa 1901. John McCrae is in the top row, far left.
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He interrupted his studies in 1900
in to command of the left section of
D Battery of the Royal Canadian
Artillery attached to the Second
Canadian Contingent during the Second
Boer War. The contingent returned to
Canada in 1901 after participating in several major campaigns.
In 1902, he was appointed resident pathologist at Montreal General Hospital and later
became assistant pathologist to the Royal
Victoria Hospital in Montreal. In 1904, he was appointed an associate in medicine at the Royal
Victoria Hospital. Later that year, he went to England where he studied for several months and was admitted to
membership in the Royal College of
Physicians.
After establishing himself in private practice he continued to lecture as several institutions. His reputation
and social connections both
grew. He was invited to accompany Lord Gray, the Governor General of Canada,
on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay as expedition physician.
He was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught
until 1911 and also taught at McGill
University in Montreal. During
these years he publish poetry, short
stories—some of them illustrated by his own skillful drawings–and essays in addition to co-authoring the then definitive Canadian text on pathology.
When war broke out, McCrae was eager
to join Canada’s Dominion forces in
service of the Empire. He turned down an offer of a high commission
in the Medical Corps preferring
active service with a front line unit. He shipped out as Brigade Surgeon and a Major
and second in command of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery.
Not long after arriving in Europe he was in the middle of the Battle of
the Ypres exhausting himself by dividing
his time between firing his guns and tending the mounting wounded.
A little over a month after writing
his famous poem, McCrae was transferred, over his voracious protests, to the Medical Corps where his services as a
doctor and administrator were sorely
needed. But as he packed to report to
his new duties, he complained to Sgt. Major Allinson that, “all the goddamn
doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and
more fighting men.”
But he loyally did his duty as
ordered. He was promoted to Lt. Colonel and placed in command of the No.
3 Canadian General Hospital at Dannes-Camiers
near Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France where he operated out of Durbar tents from India for eight months through the cold misery of frosts, floods, and mud of the winter of 1915-16.
Eventually the hospital was relocated to the old Jesuit College in the town.
McCrae remained in command through most of the rest of the war and
watched, with some amusement, as he became famous around the world for his
poem. In what little spare time he had, he prepared the manuscript for a collection of his war poems.
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But
mostly, McCrae literally worked himself
to death. On January 28, 1918 he
died of pneumonia and cerebral meningitis. He was laid
to rest the next day with full military
honors and even an extra dash of pomp
at the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission section of Wimereux
Cemetery, just a couple of miles up the coast from Boulogne.
His poem was later credited with
helping the movement to establish the Remembrance Day holiday in Britain,
Canada, and other Commonwealth
countries and especially with the use of poppies to commemorate the dead.
That practice spread to the United States when the Veterans of Foreign Wars began selling Buddy Poppies to support the war
wounded.
In Canada In Flanders Field has achieved particularly iconic status as patriotic
set piece in a nation that holds it war
veterans in unusually high regard.
Its words are inscribed on the Ten
Dollar Bill and several commemorative
quarters have featured the poppy, including one in 2004 with the poppy
colored bright red—the first multi-colored
circulation coin in the world.
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The Lt. Col. John McCrae memorial statue in Ottawa.
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In May 2015 on the centennial of the poem, a statue of McCrae by Ruth Abernathy was erected on Green Island in the Rideau River in Ottawa, Ontario. McCrae
is dressed as an artillery officer and his medical bag nearby, as he writes.
The statue shows the destruction of the battlefield and, at his feet, poppies.
A copy was also erected at Guelph Civic
Museum.
Yet as a work of poetry, it does not
get much respect. Most Canadian literature courses omit it from their text books. The darker,
more bitter anti-war tinged work of
soldier poets like Sigfried Sassoon and Wilfred
Owen get much more attention. In Flanders Field is dismissed as patriotic fluff and propaganda, or worse was denounced by war historian Paul Fussell as “stupid and vicious…. propaganda argument against a negotiated peace.” That was a bit unfair in that it was written
so relatively early in the war that neither side was considering a negotiated
peace outside of clear victory. It is true that later in the war
propagandists used the poem that way, however.
There remains to this day controversy over the first line of the
poem that has nothing to do with its political use. In the draft he sent to Punch, McCrae used
the word grow at the end of the
first line. But the Punch editor noted that he had used the same word in the second to
the last line. They substituted the word
blow in the first usage. McCrae had no objections and used that form
in his manuscript for his collection, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems
published posthumously in 1919. In sending
handwritten copies to friends and admirers, however, McCrae used both forms as
did some other publications. The version
below is how it appeared in the 1919 collection.
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In the post war years Veterans' organizations like the British Legion began selling poppies on Remembrance and Armistice Days.
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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, 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.
—John McCrae
Thank you Patrick.
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