John McCrae's (picture left) "In Flanders Fields"
remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is
a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring
of 1915.
One of the most asked questions is: why poppies?
The answer is simple: poppies only flower when everything else in the
neighbourhood is dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years,
and only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity
(for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will
sprout.
There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front;
in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when
McCrae wrote his poem, around him poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.
The last line We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to the fact
that some kinds of poppies can be used to derive opium from, from which
morphine can be made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and can be
used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a
higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.
In Flanders Fields is also the name of an American War Cemetery in Flanders
(picture right). This burial place, near the village of Waregem, has taken
its name from McCrae's poem. The bronze foot of the flag-staff is decorated
with daisies and poppies.
Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium. It is flat
country where people speak Flemish, a kind of Dutch. Flanders (Vlaanderen in Flemish) holds old and
famous cities like Antwerp, Bruges and Ypres. It is ancient battleground. For
centuries the fields of Flanders have been soaked with blood.
John McCrae's poem may be the most famous one of the Great War -
sometimes only the first two verses
are cited or printed. This is not just because of the lack of quality in the
third verse, but also because this last verse speaks of an unending quarrel
with the foe. And if one thing became clear during the Great War it was this:
there was no quarrel between the
soldiers (except maybe in the heat of a fight). The quarrel existed only in the
minds of some stupid politicians and highranking officers (who mostly never
experienced the horror of the battlefield).
Nevertheless I want to be complete and give you the full and exact
version of McCrae's great poem, taken from his own, handwritten copy. But
first, here is the story of how he wrote it - and how the recent death of a
dear friend moved him:
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South
African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and
the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing
station to last him a lifetime.
As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae,
who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University
of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians,
British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.
It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later
wrote of it:
"I wish I
could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days...
Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we
had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it
could not have been done."
One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former
student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2
May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that night in the little cemetery
outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral
ceremony in the absence of the chaplain. This had happened in complete darkness,
as for security reasons it was forbidden to make light.
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing
station beside the Yser Canal,
just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing
a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical
texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery (called 'Essex
Farm', see the drawing right by Edward Morrison), McCrae could see
the wild poppies that sprang up from the ditches and the graves, and he spent
twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a
notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year
old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae.
The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the
sergeant-major stood there quietly.
"His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled.
"He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's
grave."
When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson
and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved
by what he read:
"The poem
was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the
word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that
morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it
would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the
scene."
In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae
tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to
newspapers in England.
The Spectator, in London,
rejected it, but Punch published
it on 8 December 1915:
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.
Click here to see McCrae's handwritten copy of the poem.
Bron: 'The
Heritage of the Great War'.
Deze pagina is hier opgenomen met toestemming van de auteur,
Rob Ruggenberg