Saturday, November 10, 2012

Lest We Forget



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.
Composed at the battlefront on May 3, 1915
by Canadian Lt. Col. John McCrae 
during the second battle of Ypres, Belgium

8 comments:

  1. A powerful piece of writing. The more so because of the conditions in which he composed this small masterpiece. Did he survive do you know?

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  2. This piece never fails to leave me a blubbering mess, and for Elephants child...McCrae died Jan 28 1918 while in command of #3 Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne of pneumonia and meningitis.

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  3. If every politician who voted for war had to enlist - there would be no war. 58,000 died in Vietnam - why - what was accomplished? Over 4,000 in Iraq: Let's be clear on this one - Iraq sits on the second largest oil deposit in the world - weapons of mass destruction...bullshit.

    The Ol'Buzzard
    retired military

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  4. I've seen this poem twice today on the blogs and also on FB and it still makes me tear up.

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  5. Lt. Col. John McCrae died in the hospital he was commanding, in France, on January 28, 1918, of pneumonia (a common killer before anti-biotics).

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  6. I attended the services here in Ottawa this morning. The crowds were enormous, and the number of veterans gets smaller by the year.

    I went over to the War Museum afterwards, which was very busy. McCrae's poem is inscribed on a wall in the First World War section, and his pistol is on display there as well.

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  7. One of the most stirring pieces ever penned.

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