| In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place...
Most, if not all, Canadians are familiar with this famous poem of remembrance. I knew the poem and the poet’s name, but my impressions of the writer were vague. A Canadian soldier, somewhere in northwestern Europe. First World War. Notable for not much else but those 15 lines.
Until I began research on the writer, I didn’t even know that he was a doctor, and an eminent one at that. He co-wrote one of the bibles of medical study at the turn of the 20th century, Osler’s Modern Medicine, with Sir William Osler at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
But before all that, he was a soldier. Soldiering was a passion that started in his teens. At 15, he won a gold medal for being the best drilled cadet in Ontario. In 1899, he temporarily dropped his medical studies and went off to fight in the Boer War for a year.
He counted among his friends Stephen Leacock and Earl Grey, Canada’s former governor general. He knew Rudyard Kipling.
These were all fascinating facts about McCrae, but it was the personal details of his life that captivated my interest. And the question: How did he reconcile his role as a steadfast soldier, encouraging more young men to "Take up our quarrel with the foe," with his role as a healer?
Maybe he never did.
...and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Life was sacred to McCrae – and not just human life. He had a profound love of the outdoors, wildlife and, particularly, dogs, horses and children. How many people know that during the war, Lt. Colonel McCrae sent letters from his horse home to his nieces and nephews in Canada?
To nephew Jack:
From Bonfire to Sergt. Major Jack Kilgour,
October 1st 1916
Did you ever have a sore hock? I have one now, and Cruickshank puts bandages on my leg. He also washed my white socks for me. My master is well, and the girls (the nurses) tell me I am looking well, too. The ones I like best give me biscuits and sugar, and sometimes flowers. Another one sends me bags of carrots. If you don’t know how to eat carrots, tops and all, you had better learn, but I suppose you are just a boy, and don’t know how good oats are.
The letters were signed "Bonfire" and marked with a hoofprint.
Sir Andrew MacPhail, McCrae’s friend and war comrade, wrote of him after his death, "...dogs and children followed him as shadows follow men. To walk in the streets with him was a slow procession. Every dog and every child one met must be spoken to, and each made answer."
McCrae didn’t really know about modern warfare. It wasn’t like the Boer War or any previously known war where a soldier had a fighting chance. New technologies like balloons and airplanes made it possible for the enemy to pinpoint the location of positions from the air, directing their shells with deadly accuracy. Much of the training soldiers received was useless for the unforeseen horrors of trench warfare.
Generally, the battles of The Great War were merely the sustained, mechanized slaughter of millions of young men, often for no territorial gain.
McCrae dreamt of commanding his own artillery unit, but he was 41 and his soldiering skills were rusty. Instead he was given the rank of major, made second in command of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, and designated Senior Medical Officer.
With the second battle of Ypres, Belgium, McCrae’s life was altered forever. "Seventeen days of Hades," he called it. It was a battle which also saw a terrible line crossed with Germany’s use of poison gas as a weapon.
McCrae had been pleased to have a friend from home in his unit, 22-year-old Lt. Alexis Helmer. Helmer had been one of his students at McGill and McCrae was fond of him. On May 2, 1915, Helmer was manning a field gun when an enemy shell exploded at his feet, obliterating him. In the absence of the chaplain, John McCrae said the service over Helmer’s remains.
It was in those hours after Helmer’s burial that McCrae composed his famous poem. McCrae sat on the back of an ambulance wagon and wrote, looking over occasionally to Helmer’s grave. A profusion of wild red poppies had sprung up in the disturbed soil amidst the wooden crosses.
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.
When the Second Battle of Ypres ended, John McCrae was promoted to Lt. Colonel and sent away from the front for good. He was put in charge of the 3rd Canadian Hospital, McGill in Boulogne, France.
Although he allowed his poem to be used for recruitment, McCrae was becoming despondent. His health began to decline. His outlook only worsened with the treatment of thousands of casualties from many of the remaining battles of the war – The Somme, Festubert, Passchendaele.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you, from failing hands we throw,
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
He became distant, his only solace being long rides into the French countryside on Bonfire with Bonneau, a canine friend, at his side. He confided a dark fear to his friend, General Andrew MacPhail, that they appeared to be losing the war.
On January 24, 1918, McCrae became ill with a combination of pneumonia and meningitis. He lapsed into a coma and died four days later. He died believing that the deaths of all the young soldiers he had tried so hard to save were probably for nothing. He was 46.
In October 1997, I read with disbelief that John McCrae’s medals were coming up for auction to the highest bidder at a Toronto hotel. How could this happen?
A benevolent, immigrant businessman from Toronto jumped into the bidding and managed to purchase the medals for $400,000. He immediately donated them to the McCrae House Museum in Guelph, Ontario. If Arthur Lee had not done so, John McCrae’s medals would be in the hands of a private collector.
Do our heroes mean so little?
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
In Flanders fields.
On November 11, let us honour all of our veterans and the generation of Canadian men, almost 67,000, that we lost in the First World War.
I ask you also to remember and honour John McCrae for his service and sacrifice both as a soldier and as a doctor. Maybe somehow in the great scheme of things, we can reconcile the difference between healer and warrior for him. |
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