Remembrance Day 2014

In Flanders Fields 

In Flanders field 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.

 ~ Major John McCrae, May 1915 

 The red Flanders’ poppy was first described as a flower of remembrance by Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918), who was a Professor of Medicine at McGill University of Canada before World War One. Colonel McCrae had served as a gunner in the Boer War, but went to France in World War One as a medical Officer with the first Canadian Contingent. At the second battle of Ypres in 1915, while in charge of a small first-aid post, he wrote In Flanders Fields in pencil on a page torn from his dispatch book when a close friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle. Helmer was one of 6000 Canadian casualties in just 48 hours. 

Colonel McCrae, while still serving in the field hospital, caught pneumonia and meningitis and died on January 28, 1918 in Boulogne, France. His volume of poetry, In Flanders’ Fields and Other Poems, was published in 1919.

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By way of thanks to those who have served so that we could live in a country where freedom is taken for granted and for the sons and daughters of Canada who serve now so that we may continue to enjoy that freedom. 

In Memory Of

CPL. Nathan Cirillo, October 22, 2014

WO Patrice Vincent, October 20, 2014

Lest We Forget