TRIBUTE IN FLANDERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1938, Page 8

TRIBUTE IN FLANDERS.

: POPPIES AND CROSSES. s 5 (By BERXHARD RAGXER.) Twenty years ago there died in Wimoreux Military Hospital, on the Channel coast of France, the man who was privileged to write , ''the greatest poem in England occasioned by , the World War." He was Colonel .lolin McCrae. f a medical officer of the Cana<lian Expeditionary . Forces; the poem was "In Flanders Fields." r At the graVe of Colonel McCrae a group of J pilgrims, men who fought on tlie Flanders front, recently paid a tribute to his memory. John McCrae is buried in Wimereux com- • nmnal cemetery, in the British military section, and. across the year*, his grave has become a place of meditation and prayer. Tlig . second verse of his poem is inscribed on the memorial bench which stands near his tomb. Lavender and rose- grow in profusion there, and on Armistice Day each year his grave is 11 sprinkled with blood-red poppies from Flanders. British ex-service men residing in Boulogne look after McCrae's last resting place, which is marked with a simple headstone; upon it , we lind his name. rank, the date of his death and tlie maple leaf of Canada. I '"In Flanders Fields'' was written durin-r i the second battle of Ypres in ]Oir>. It was near l'operinghe, in Belgium, a frontier city which is known to thousands of American r-oldiers, particularly those who fought at . Kemmel. Audemirde and Wae.eghein (America I has erected memorials in each of these towns) in the summer of IOIS. Indeed, when Flanders Field Cemetery was dedicated la~t August. McCrae's moving * er.-es were recited once anain bv Harry W. Colmcry. at the time national I commander of t"!ie American Legion. i In a Lull in the Battle. j At the Ypres battle Mcf'rae was in charge f of a tiny first-aid post cut into tho bank of [the canal. Durinj a lull in the battle he wrote in pencil, on a page torn from his dispatch book, the three immortal verses, which have not lost their power despite frequent quotation. He sent his poem to "Punch" anonymously. and the editor, with unerring instinct, recognised its beauty at once. He even printed the poem in heavy-leaded type, which is used by "Punch" only on great occasions. As if by miracle, the verses readied the outer fringes of the earth in record time. The poem enjoyed unusual popularity in the United States, even before the historic day of April fi. 1917. when America lined up with the Allied Powers. loiter the identity of the author was revealed, and Colonel McCrae was inundated with telegrams and letters. Both j his technique and the f-üblimity of his thought ; received unbounded praise. As a matter of fact. "In Flanders Field-" was a perfect job. Quite literally, it defies translation. For two decades French writers have tried to render it into French ver-e; they have not succeeded; even the French prose translations are unsatisfactory. The poem was real: so were the poppies, the singing larks and the belching guns. For example, in McCrae's diary, under date of April 2ii. 101.1. we read: "Another day of heavy actions. Yesterday up to noon we filed .'IOOO rounds for the 24 hours: to-day we have fired much less, but we have registered fresh fronts and burned some farms behind the German trenches. Last night much French and British artillery lias come in. and the place is thick with Germans. There are many prematures (with so mneh firing), "but the pieces are usually spread before they get to us. It is j disquieting, however. I must say. And all the j time the birds sin.g in the trees over our heads." Born of Fire and Blood. If confirmation were needed, it is to be found in the testimony of McCrae's commanding officer, Major-General E. W. B. Morrison: "This poem was literally born of fire and blood during the hottest phase of the second battle of Ypres. Mv headquarters were in a trench on the top of the bank of the Ypres Canal, and John had his dressing station in a hole dug in the foot of the bank. During periods in the battle men who were sliot actually rolled down the bank into liis dressing station. Many times during the sixteen days of battle Tie and I watched the chaplains burying their dead whenever there was a lull. Time the crosses, row on row, grew into a good-sized cemetery. We often heard the larks in the mornings singing high in the air, between the crash of the shells and the reports of the guns in tho battery just beside us. John told me that he had written the poem to pass away the time between the arrival of batches of wounded and partly as an experiment with several varieties of poetic metre. Even in the South African War, where he served as an artillery man, he devoted his idle moments to writing verse. His years of preparation, of patient and continued experimentation, permitted him to write a deathless ppem," Since 1915 the erosees, row on row (which, were made of wood), have disappeared, being replaced by others of white marble, which form part of the British military cemetery near Poperinghe. A memorial chapel has also been built "near the spot where McCrae pencilled his famous lines; to it every month ex-soldiers of differing creeds and countries come to pray. McCrae was a doctor by profession; he had served in a Maryland hospital; for a year he was professor of pathology in the University of Vermont; he was the co-author of an authoritative volume of 878 pages on the subject. But, as a military man, his first and last love was the artillery, having seen action in this branch of the service in South Africa. His diary is punctuated with entries to the effect that "the poor old artillery never gets any mention."