Day remembers 1915 landing

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 18

Day remembers 1915 landing

and now we lie In Flanders’ fields, 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. The verses were first published in “Punch” under the title “In Flanders’ Fields.”

Red poppies will be worn and dawn parades will be held this week throughout the country — all in memory of New Zealanders who have been killed in wars. Anzac Day, which falls this year on Friday, April 25, marks the anniversary when soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli, in western Turkey, on April 25, 1915. In the Gallipoli campaign,

2721 New Zealand soldiers were killed and nearly 5000 wounded. The Flanders poppy was first described as a “Flower of Remembrance” by Colonel John McCrae, who before the First World War was a well-known professor of medicine at McGill University, in Montreal. He had served as a gunner in the South African War, and at the outbreak of World War I

decided to join the fighting ranks. But the powers-that-be decided that his abilities could be used to better advantage, and so he landed in France as a medical officer with the first Canadian Army contingent At the second battle of Ypres, in 1915, in charge of a small first-aid post and during a lull in action, he wrote, in pencil, on a page tom from his despatch book, the follow-

ing verses: 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,