> In Flanders Fields
> By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
> Canadian Army

Nice to see the mention of a Canadian hero's attitude too.   Interesting how
this poem quickly took off as a universal sentiment.   Even John Phillip
Sousa, while still a soldier himself, set this poem to music in a rather
powerful song.    Interesting too that he is considered a hero because of 
his poem, not because of an act of shooting or saving people.

McCrae was a real lover of life who enjoyed rubbing shoulders at coffee 
houses with
famous poets to challenge his own desire to write (he would have enjoyed
this list), canoed into the wilderness with prime ministers, loved his horse
more than his women friends, enjoyed the company of everyone (including his
women friends), practiced medicine as a fine doctor well respected by his
patients and peers, sketched landscapes in his journal with the artistic
skill of a draftsman, and died suddenly at the end of the war in France of
pneumonia.   It ain't all bullets that gets 'em.

cp in bc


>
> 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.
>

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