In Flanders Fields

In the Spring of 1915, John McCrae was stationed as a medical officer at the Second Battle of Ypres. Amidst enemy fire, he and his staff cared for hundreds of wounded soldiers each day for seventeen straight days. The day after his closest bud was killed by an exploding shell, McCrae sat on the back of an ambulance, within sight of the new grave, and wrote In Flanders Field.

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.

As you probably know, trench warfare was the most common way of fighting during World War I. There were times when armies would fight eight and nine month long battles and lose hundreds of thousands of men and women just to have the fronts move merely a couple of miles. Soldiers would be ordered to suicidally climb over the top of the trench just to get mowed down by the enemy's machine guns. The area between the opposing trenches was called no man's land, and was often filled with the dead and decaying.

It was in this place where the beautiful poppies would bloom, and paint the battlefields beautiful shades of red-orange. It would be these poppies, protruding from the same ground that contained so many of their fellow soldiers, that would serve as the only glimmer of beauty and life to those still left to fight. I like to think about how trying and dark fighting in this war must have been, and what a contrast those poppies must have seemed, knowing that there was at least some bit of beauty stemming from and existing amongst the chaos.