John McCrae

The lieutenant-colonel John Alexander McCrae (November 30th 1872 - January 28th 1918) is an army medical officer born with the Canada.

Biography

John Mc Crae is a Médecin Biologiste which enlisted voluntarily initially for the Guerre of Boers in South Africa then in the Canadian Task force during the Great War.
He was promoted with the rank of Lieutenant-colonel of the Canadian Medical community. It is him which would have written in May 1915 with Boezinge a poem into full Bataille with Flandres. He dies with the British Military hospital of Wimereux at the end of January 1918.

The poem

The poem In Flanders Fields , With the field of honor in French, evokes with a great simplicity the battle fields of Flandres.
It became for the British the symbol of a whole generation mown in the flower of the age, following the example novels of Roland Dorgelès or Maurice Genevoix for French.

Part of this poem is found in the cloakroom of the team of hockey " Canadians of Montréal" , of the National league of Hockey. Strong of a rich person tradition, the team having gained the most championships (Stanley Cut) posts this extract very right below the photographs of the players who allowed with the Temple of were re-elected hockey:

" Our ravaged arms tighten you the torch, with you maintaining to carry it well haut."

Paper poppies

On the tombs and the British steles, in the middle of the cathedral of Ypres, flower today still of the poppies of papier.
Since 1921, following the poem of John Mc Crae, the British chose like " flower of the souvenir" this fragile flower of the fields, called “poppy” in anglais.
The poppies are still carried to the buttonhole of the British to each commemorative ceremony of Large Guerre.
This “flower of the memory”, that one raises in the “Poppy day”, does not recall the red color of the British uniforms of parade but the vision of the battle field of John McCrae to Boezinge, close to Ypres.
France had chosen the cornflower which cotoyait the poppy in the fields.

The place of the writing

It is possible to visit the position where John Mc Crae wrote this poem with Boezinge, where the bunkers are still drawn up, always taking care on the channel along Diksmuideweg (the way of Dixmude).

References

Source: François Hanscotte

External bonds

museum John Alexander McCrae
In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, on the Project Gutenberg
Ways of Memory: John Mc Crae

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