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'In Flanders fields the poppies blow...' - The making of the poem
By Rob Ruggenberg
John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields the poppies grow" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.
One of the most asked questions is: why poppies? The answer is simple: poppies is the only flower when everything else in the neighbourhood is dead. Their the poppies seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, and only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), the poppies seeds will sprout.
There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.
The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to the fact that some kinds of poppies can be used to derive opium from, from which morphine can be made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers made form poppies and can be used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.
In Flanders Fields is also the name of an American War Cemetery in Flanders. This burial place, near the village of Waregem, has taken its name from McCrae's (Canadian) poem. The bronze foot of the flag-staff is decorated with daisies and poppies.
Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium. It is flat country where people speak Flemish, a kind of Dutch. Flanders (Vlaanderen in Flemish) holds old and famous cities like Antwerp, Bruges and Ypres. It is ancient battleground. For centuries the fields of Flanders have been soaked with blood then poppies in an endless cycle.
The poppies poem
The next evening, sitting on the rearstep of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Yser Canal, just a few hundred yards north of Ypresa and a field of poppies, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up from the ditches and the graves, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae.
The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly.
"His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."
When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:
"The poem was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."
Experimenting with the Metre
Allinson's account corresponds with the words of the commanding officer at the spot, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Morrison. McCrae told him he drafted the poem partly to pass the time between the arrival of two groups of wounded at the first aid post, and partly to experiment with different variations of the metre.
The poem (initially called We shall not sleep) was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but Morrison retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England.
The Spectator, in London, rejected it and send the poem back, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915 (although the magazine misspelled his name as McCree and promoted him to Lt. Colonel):
In Flanders Fields
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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