Posted on 11/01/2014 8:14:41 AM PDT by GreyFriar
Little was recognisable of 22-year-old Lieutenant Alexis Helmer after he took a direct hit from a German shell at Ypres on the Western Front one May morning in 1915. His pals gathered what they could find of his remains into sandbags and then arranged them in the shape of a human inside an army blanket.
At sunset he was buried — just another of the hundreds of thousands of men of the British Empire to die in World War I.
The officer who spoke over his grave as the battle raged around them was his close friend Lt-Col John McCrae, an Army doctor.
The next day, after a night of tending chlorine gas victims, he looked out from his first-aid post onto a sea of wooden crosses — his friend’s the latest, mingling with the wild red corn poppies that grew there.
Then he tore a page from his dispatch book and began to write. In 20 minutes, it was done:
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.
Not just an immortal poem was created that morning. It was also the beginning of the corn poppy as the symbol of remembrance of those who die in battle.
Continue the article and the story of the lady who gave us the poppy as a rememberance of those lost in WWI
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The story behind the wearing of the red poppy for
Armistice/Veteran’s Day. I remember the American Legion and VFW giving these out when I was a child in the 1950s.
Thank you for adding the photographs. There is a memorial to Lieutenant Colonel McCrae in a reconstructed part of the trench line where he wrote “In Flanders’s Field.” It is on the outskirts of the city of Ypres.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e4jqTF6aks
Thanks for posting this.
In Flanders’ Field, the poppies grow.... See my original post.
bttt
Also, the “poppies” of Flanders Fields are “Corn Poppies” and are NOT related to opium poppies of the Afghanistan and other opium poppy regions.
You’re welcome
"So you ... "
And I thought;
So we WHAT ?
Serve up communism/socialism/liberalism ... is THAT why we lie here ?
As an exercise ... tag the poem (prayer) with ..
So you can ... or so I can ...
And, as I have written before on these pages, every pay day Dad and I would go to the old corner turreted sandstone bank in Eufala to deposit his check and get a little walking money then we would go to JM’s Cafe for a hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and cloverleaf rolls. These were our celebration days for work well done. Most days we had a quart of milk, bread and perhaps some cheese for our lunch. He was an honest, straight shooting, smart man of impeccable integrity. He had a reputation for being very tough though and those that crossed his principles may suffer to know the reason why. He loved kids and critters and brought hitch-hikers home for a hot meal, a hot bath and then took them to the bus station the next morning when he went to work to send them on their way clean, well fed and with a ticket to where they were headed. Momma was a nervous but willing helpmate to Dad’s good will.
Each pay-day before we left the bank he bought a poppy and put it in his lapel for his buddies who were not there and the ones with no arms or legs or who were here but lost. He captivated me with his stories of “The Brown Baby” a buddy who got it from a burp gun in Italy, and others. Like so many of his generation, he remembered boys he knew who died while he lived on to become a man, a husband and a father and to serve God. Doing these things well was his life’s ambition. All other things were in support of that mission.
Like so many of us I have sweet memories of Dad and all the days I spent riding shotgun with him. First grade was a terrible blow to me since it marked the end of my days out on the world with Dad. Summer was a real escape from my prison. I had a wonderful childhood that was not without bumps, scrapes and hurts that helped to toughen me for the trials ahead. I thought all people got to grow up like me but have since learned much differently. Thanks Dad.
Each year for the last many I write this tribute to Dad and all the men who came home and made the good life we have known. I grieve their passing, the loss of their moral courage, the example they set and the sacrifice of those who never came home. Now we have new Veterans who made the same sacrifices and I grieve that and shudder to see what we have become that is such an insult to them. Dad’s Grandson is one of the new Veterans. They are nearly alike in more ways than not.
The sun came up this morning to a beautiful Fall day. Cool and bright and I got out in it for some chores. I startled awake at 0330 this morning though with this on my mind: When asked if we have done our best should our truthful answer be that we did the best we were willing to do instead?
Thank you for sharing your memories of you and your WWI veteran father.
Dad was WWII and Korea but thanks for the notice anyway.
My Grandfather was WWI.
Always had a special fondness for Lt-Col John McCrae and his heart touching poem. He was a Canadian, this article written in a British paper leaves that out which by omission seemingly implies he is British instead of Canadian.
Now as for the wearing of poppies to remember those who died in service, no people do it up like the Canadians, it is almost a national symbol to Canadians.
It wasn't till about a year and a half ago that an aunt of mine, who has been researching the family heritage, told me that he was an ambulance driver in Argonne, France during that war.
Thank you for posting this story. I knew about the poem, but not the lady.
Moina Michael was also a professor at the University of Georgia.
Ping!
Great People, never talked about their experiences until me and my cousins got back from Nam, I figured they thought we grew up.
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