In Flanders Fields
"In Flanders Fields" is the most evocative and well-known poem of World War One.
During the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, Captain John McCrae, a doctor with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, was treating gas cases and the wounded in a dug-out in the banks of a canal at Boezinge, close to Ypres.
In April the fighting claimed the life of one of his best friends and the next day Captain McCrae wrote the poem as the poppies bloomed between the simple wooden crosses marking the temporary graves of those who had died.
Today the site, known as Essex Farm, is a war cemetery and the reinforced concrete dug-outs have been partially restored. A memorial designed by the Bruges sculptor Pieter-Hein Boudens commemorates John McCrae, who died in France in 1918, and the poem is engraved on a plaque. In the town of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, the limestone cottage where he was born is now a museum with a Garden of Remembrance and a Cenotaph.
John McCrae's poem achieved huge recognition and partly because of this the poppy is worn as the Flower of Remembrance for those who died at war. It is worn not only in New Zealand - it is also worn in Australia, Canada, the UK and other Commonwealth countries, as well as in Belgium, France and the United States, for example.
Today the wild red poppies of Flanders continue to grow beside the railway lines and the roads, beside the embankments and canals, and, of course, in the fields...
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.