Lest We Forget

I listened to my 7 year old son recite the first verse of this poem and next thing I knew, my vision blurred with tears.
Let's pray that our youth never know the experience of a battlefield.
Let's hope our children do a better job with tolerance, knowledge and understanding that we have done.




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 with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Doctor Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae (b. Guelph, Ontario) of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade wrote this poem on May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres.




Oh! You who sleep in Flanders’ fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew,
We caught the torch you threw,
And holding high we kept
The faith with those who died.
We cherish too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valour led.

It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders’ fields.

And now the torch and poppy red
Wear in honour of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught
We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders’ fields.

Written by Miss Moina Belle Michael, an American, on Nov 9, 1918, the Saturday before the Armistice was signed. She read John McCrae's poem, In Flanders Fields and it made such an impression on her that she wrote this in reply.

PEACE.