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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of In Flanders Fields And Other Poems
+by John McCrae
+
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+In Flanders Fields And Other Poems
+
+by John McCrae
+
+November 11, 1995  [Etext #353]
+Veterans' Day
+
+entered/proofed by A. Light, of Waxhaw <alight@mercury.interpath.net>
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+
+
+
+
+
+In Flanders Fields
+by John McCrae [Canadian Poet, 1872-1918]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Note on text:  Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces.
+Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
+Some slight errors have been corrected.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In Flanders Fields
+by John McCrae
+
+With an Essay in Character by Sir Andrew Macphail
+
+========
+
+John McCrae, physician, soldier, and poet, died in France
+a Lieutenant-Colonel with the Canadian forces.
+
+The poem which gives this collection of his lovely verse its name
+has been extensively reprinted, and received with unusual enthusiasm.
+
+The volume contains, as well, a striking essay in character
+by his friend, Sir Andrew Macphail.
+
+========
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In Flanders Fields
+And Other Poems
+
+By Lieut.-Col. John McCrae, M.D.
+
+With An Essay in Character
+By Sir Andrew Macphail
+
+
+[This text is taken from the New York edition of 1919.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+{Although the poem itself is included shortly, this next section
+is included for completeness, and to show John McCrae's punctuation --
+also to show that I'm not the only one who forgets lines.  -- A. L.}
+
+
+
+
+In Flanders Fields
+        --
+
+
+In Flanders fields the poppies grow
+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.
+
+                      John McCrae
+
+
+{From a} Facsimile of an autograph copy of the poem "In Flanders Fields"
+
+This was probably written from memory as "grow" is used in place of "blow"
+in the first line.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+
+In Flanders Fields
+  1915
+
+The Anxious Dead
+  1917
+
+The Warrior
+  1907
+
+Isandlwana
+  1910
+
+The Unconquered Dead
+  1906
+
+The Captain
+  1913
+
+The Song of the Derelict
+  1898
+
+Quebec
+  1908
+
+Then and Now
+  1896
+
+Unsolved
+  1895
+
+The Hope of My Heart
+  1894
+
+Penance
+  1896
+
+Slumber Songs
+  1897
+
+The Oldest Drama
+  1907
+
+Recompense
+  1896
+
+Mine Host
+  1897
+
+Equality
+  1898
+
+Anarchy
+  1897
+
+Disarmament
+  1899
+
+The Dead Master
+  1913
+
+The Harvest of the Sea
+  1898
+
+The Dying of Pere Pierre
+  1904
+
+Eventide
+  1895
+
+Upon Watts' Picture "Sic Transit"
+  1904
+
+A Song of Comfort
+  1894
+
+The Pilgrims
+  1905
+
+The Shadow of the Cross
+  1894
+
+The Night Cometh
+  1913
+
+In Due Season
+  1897
+
+John McCrae
+  An Essay in Character by Sir Andrew Macphail
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In Flanders Fields
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+The Anxious Dead
+
+
+
+O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
+ Above their heads the legions pressing on:
+(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
+ And died not knowing how the day had gone.)
+
+O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
+ The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
+Then let your mighty chorus witness be
+ To them, and Caesar, that we still make war.
+
+Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call,
+ That we have sworn, and will not turn aside,
+That we will onward till we win or fall,
+ That we will keep the faith for which they died.
+
+Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,
+ They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;
+Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,
+ And in content may turn them to their sleep.
+
+
+
+
+The Warrior
+
+
+
+He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days,
+ But with the night his little lamp-lit room
+Was bright with battle flame, or through a haze
+ Of smoke that stung his eyes he heard the boom
+Of Bluecher's guns; he shared Almeida's scars,
+ And from the close-packed deck, about to die,
+Looked up and saw the "Birkenhead"'s tall spars
+ Weave wavering lines across the Southern sky:
+
+Or in the stifling 'tween decks, row on row,
+ At Aboukir, saw how the dead men lay;
+  Charged with the fiercest in Busaco's strife,
+Brave dreams are his -- the flick'ring lamp burns low --
+ Yet couraged for the battles of the day
+  He goes to stand full face to face with life.
+
+
+
+
+Isandlwana
+
+
+
+     Scarlet coats, and crash o' the band,
+      The grey of a pauper's gown,
+     A soldier's grave in Zululand,
+      And a woman in Brecon Town.
+
+My little lad for a soldier boy,
+ (Mothers o' Brecon Town!)
+My eyes for tears and his for joy
+ When he went from Brecon Town,
+His for the flags and the gallant sights
+His for the medals and his for the fights,
+And mine for the dreary, rainy nights
+ At home in Brecon Town.
+
+They say he's laid beneath a tree,
+ (Come back to Brecon Town!)
+Shouldn't I know? --  I was there to see:
+ (It's far to Brecon Town!)
+It's me that keeps it trim and drest
+With a briar there and a rose by his breast --
+The English flowers he likes the best
+ That I bring from Brecon Town.
+
+And I sit beside him -- him and me,
+ (We're back to Brecon Town.)
+To talk of the things that used to be
+ (Grey ghosts of Brecon Town);
+I know the look o' the land and sky,
+And the bird that builds in the tree near by,
+And times I hear the jackals cry,
+ And me in Brecon Town.
+
+     Golden grey on miles of sand
+      The dawn comes creeping down;
+     It's day in far off Zululand
+      And night in Brecon Town.
+
+
+
+
+The Unconquered Dead
+
+     ". . . defeated, with great loss."
+
+
+
+Not we the conquered!  Not to us the blame
+ Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
+Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
+ Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.
+
+That day of battle in the dusty heat
+ We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
+Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
+ And we the harvest of their garnering.
+
+Some yielded, No, not we!  Not we, we swear
+ By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
+Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
+ Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.
+
+We might have yielded, even we, but death
+ Came for our helper; like a sudden flood
+The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath
+ We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.
+
+The roar fell faint and farther off, and soon
+ Sank to a foolish humming in our ears,
+Like crickets in the long, hot afternoon
+ Among the wheat fields of the olden years.
+
+Before our eyes a boundless wall of red
+ Shot through by sudden streaks of jagged pain!
+Then a slow-gathering darkness overhead
+ And rest came on us like a quiet rain.
+
+Not we the conquered!  Not to us the shame,
+ Who hold our earthen ramparts, nor shall cease
+To hold them ever; victors we, who came
+ In that fierce moment to our honoured peace.
+
+
+
+
+The Captain
+
+1797
+
+
+
+     Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
+      Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain,
+     A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,
+      Yet unashamed:  her memories remain.
+
+It was Nelson in the `Captain', Cape St. Vincent far alee,
+ With the `Vanguard' leading s'uth'ard in the haze --
+Little Jervis and the Spaniards and the fight that was to be,
+Twenty-seven Spanish battleships, great bullies of the sea,
+ And the `Captain' there to find her day of days.
+
+Right into them the `Vanguard' leads, but with a sudden tack
+ The Spaniards double swiftly on their trail;
+Now Jervis overshoots his mark, like some too eager pack,
+He will not overtake them, haste he e'er so greatly back,
+ But Nelson and the `Captain' will not fail.
+
+Like a tigress on her quarry leaps the `Captain' from her place,
+ To lie across the fleeing squadron's way:
+Heavy odds and heavy onslaught, gun to gun and face to face,
+Win the ship a name of glory, win the men a death of grace,
+ For a little hold the Spanish fleet in play.
+
+Ended now the "Captain"'s battle, stricken sore she falls aside
+ Holding still her foemen, beaten to the knee:
+As the `Vanguard' drifted past her, "Well done, `Captain'," Jervis cried,
+Rang the cheers of men that conquered, ran the blood of men that died,
+ And the ship had won her immortality.
+
+     Lo! here her progeny of steel and steam,
+      A funnelled monster at her mooring swings:
+     Still, in our hearts, we see her pennant stream,
+      And "Well done, `Captain'," like a trumpet rings.
+
+
+
+
+The Song of the Derelict
+
+
+
+Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
+ (I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
+Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
+ (A treacherous lover, the sea!)
+Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night
+A hull in the gloom -- a quick hail -- and a light
+And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite
+ From the doom that ye meted to me.
+
+I was sister to `Terrible', seventy-four,
+ (Yo ho! for the swing of the sea!)
+And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more
+ (Alas! for the might of the sea!)
+Ye taunt me and sing me her fate for a sign!
+What harm can ye wreak more on me or on mine?
+Ho braggart!  I care not for boasting of thine --
+ A fig for the wrath of the sea!
+
+Some night to the lee of the land I shall steal,
+ (Heigh-ho to be home from the sea!)
+No pilot but Death at the rudderless wheel,
+ (None knoweth the harbor as he!)
+To lie where the slow tide creeps hither and fro
+And the shifting sand laps me around, for I know
+That my gallant old crew are in Port long ago --
+ For ever at peace with the sea!
+
+
+
+
+Quebec
+
+1608-1908
+
+
+
+Of old, like Helen, guerdon of the strong --
+ Like Helen fair, like Helen light of word, --
+"The spoils unto the conquerors belong.
+ Who winneth me must win me by the sword."
+
+Grown old, like Helen, once the jealous prize
+ That strong men battled for in savage hate,
+Can she look forth with unregretful eyes,
+ Where sleep Montcalm and Wolfe beside her gate?
+
+
+
+
+Then and Now
+
+
+
+Beneath her window in the fragrant night
+ I half forget how truant years have flown
+Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,
+ Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrown
+Upon the casement; but the nodding leaves
+ Sweep lazily across the unlit pane,
+And to and fro beneath the shadowy eaves,
+ Like restless birds, the breath of coming rain
+Creeps, lilac-laden, up the village street
+ When all is still, as if the very trees
+Were listening for the coming of her feet
+ That come no more; yet, lest I weep, the breeze
+Sings some forgotten song of those old years
+Until my heart grows far too glad for tears.
+
+
+
+
+Unsolved
+
+
+
+Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
+ Disdaining kinship with my fellow man;
+Alike to me were human smiles and tears,
+ I cared not whither Earth's great life-stream ran,
+Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine,
+ God made me look into a woman's eyes;
+And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine,
+ Knew in a moment that the eternal skies
+Were measured but in inches, to the quest
+ That lay before me in that mystic gaze.
+"Surely I have been errant:  it is best
+ That I should tread, with men their human ways."
+God took the teacher, ere the task was learned,
+And to my lonely books again I turned.
+
+
+
+
+The Hope of My Heart
+
+"Delicta juventutis et ignorantius ejus, quoesumus ne memineris, Domine."
+
+
+
+I left, to earth, a little maiden fair,
+ With locks of gold, and eyes that shamed the light;
+I prayed that God might have her in His care
+            And sight.
+
+Earth's love was false; her voice, a siren's song;
+ (Sweet mother-earth was but a lying name)
+The path she showed was but the path of wrong
+            And shame.
+
+"Cast her not out!" I cry.  God's kind words come --
+ "Her future is with Me, as was her past;
+It shall be My good will to bring her home
+            At last."
+
+
+
+
+Penance
+
+
+
+My lover died a century ago,
+Her dear heart stricken by my sland'rous breath,
+Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know
+            The peace of death.
+
+Men pass my grave, and say, "'Twere well to sleep,
+Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!"
+How should they know the vigils that I keep,
+            The tears I shed?
+
+Upon the grave, I count with lifeless breath,
+Each night, each year, the flowers that bloom and die,
+Deeming the leaves, that fall to dreamless death,
+            More blest than I.
+
+'Twas just last year -- I heard two lovers pass
+So near, I caught the tender words he said:
+To-night the rain-drenched breezes sway the grass
+            Above his head.
+
+That night full envious of his life was I,
+That youth and love should stand at his behest;
+To-night, I envy him, that he should lie
+            At utter rest.
+
+
+
+
+Slumber Songs
+
+
+
+  I
+
+Sleep, little eyes
+That brim with childish tears amid thy play,
+Be comforted!  No grief of night can weigh
+Against the joys that throng thy coming day.
+
+Sleep, little heart!
+There is no place in Slumberland for tears:
+Life soon enough will bring its chilling fears
+And sorrows that will dim the after years.
+Sleep, little heart!
+
+
+  II
+
+Ah, little eyes
+Dead blossoms of a springtime long ago,
+That life's storm crushed and left to lie below
+The benediction of the falling snow!
+
+Sleep, little heart
+That ceased so long ago its frantic beat!
+The years that come and go with silent feet
+Have naught to tell save this -- that rest is sweet.
+Dear little heart.
+
+
+
+
+The Oldest Drama
+
+     "It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers.
+     And he said unto his father, My head, my head.  And he said to a lad,
+     Carry him to his mother.  And . . . he sat on her knees till noon,
+     and then died.  And she went up, and laid him on the bed. . . .
+     And shut the door upon him and went out."
+
+
+
+Immortal story that no mother's heart
+ Ev'n yet can read, nor feel the biting pain
+That rent her soul!  Immortal not by art
+ Which makes a long past sorrow sting again
+
+Like grief of yesterday:  but since it said
+ In simplest word the truth which all may see,
+Where any mother sobs above her dead
+ And plays anew the silent tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+Recompense
+
+
+
+I saw two sowers in Life's field at morn,
+ To whom came one in angel guise and said,
+"Is it for labour that a man is born?
+ Lo:  I am Ease.  Come ye and eat my bread!"
+Then gladly one forsook his task undone
+ And with the Tempter went his slothful way,
+The other toiled until the setting sun
+ With stealing shadows blurred the dusty day.
+
+Ere harvest time, upon earth's peaceful breast
+ Each laid him down among the unreaping dead.
+"Labour hath other recompense than rest,
+ Else were the toiler like the fool," I said;
+"God meteth him not less, but rather more
+Because he sowed and others reaped his store."
+
+
+
+
+Mine Host
+
+
+
+There stands a hostel by a travelled way;
+ Life is the road and Death the worthy host;
+Each guest he greets, nor ever lacks to say,
+ "How have ye fared?"  They answer him, the most,
+"This lodging place is other than we sought;
+ We had intended farther, but the gloom
+Came on apace, and found us ere we thought:
+ Yet will we lodge.  Thou hast abundant room."
+
+Within sit haggard men that speak no word,
+ No fire gleams their cheerful welcome shed;
+No voice of fellowship or strife is heard
+ But silence of a multitude of dead.
+"Naught can I offer ye," quoth Death, "but rest!"
+And to his chamber leads each tired guest.
+
+
+
+
+Equality
+
+
+
+I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
+ Into a nation all his great heart thought,
+Unsatisfied until he should achieve
+ The grand ideal that his manhood sought;
+Yet as he saw the end within his reach,
+ Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,
+And all men said, "He gave his life to teach
+ The task of honour to a sordid land!"
+Within his gates I saw, through all those years,
+ One at his humble toil with cheery face,
+Whom (being dead) the children, half in tears,
+ Remembered oft, and missed him from his place.
+If he be greater that his people blessed
+Than he the children loved, God knoweth best.
+
+
+
+
+Anarchy
+
+
+
+I saw a city filled with lust and shame,
+ Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light;
+And sudden, in the midst of it, there came
+ One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right.
+
+And speaking, fell before that brutish race
+ Like some poor wren that shrieking eagles tear,
+While brute Dishonour, with her bloodless face
+ Stood by and smote his lips that moved in prayer.
+
+"Speak not of God!  In centuries that word
+ Hath not been uttered!  Our own king are we."
+And God stretched forth his finger as He heard
+ And o'er it cast a thousand leagues of sea.
+
+
+
+
+Disarmament
+
+
+
+One spake amid the nations, "Let us cease
+ From darkening with strife the fair World's light,
+We who are great in war be great in peace.
+ No longer let us plead the cause by might."
+
+But from a million British graves took birth
+ A silent voice -- the million spake as one --
+"If ye have righted all the wrongs of earth
+ Lay by the sword!  Its work and ours is done."
+
+
+
+
+The Dead Master
+
+
+
+Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
+To-day around him surges from the silences of Time
+A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,
+Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God.
+
+
+
+
+The Harvest of the Sea
+
+
+
+The earth grows white with harvest; all day long
+ The sickles gleam, until the darkness weaves
+Her web of silence o'er the thankful song
+ Of reapers bringing home the golden sheaves.
+
+The wave tops whiten on the sea fields drear,
+ And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap;
+But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear
+ The half-hushed sobbing of the hearts that weep.
+
+
+
+
+The Dying of Pere Pierre
+
+     ". . . with two other priests; the same night he died,
+     and was buried by the shores of the lake that bears his name."
+                                                       Chronicle.
+
+
+
+"Nay, grieve not that ye can no honour give
+ To these poor bones that presently must be
+But carrion; since I have sought to live
+ Upon God's earth, as He hath guided me,
+I shall not lack!  Where would ye have me lie?
+ High heaven is higher than cathedral nave:
+Do men paint chancels fairer than the sky?"
+ Beside the darkened lake they made his grave,
+Below the altar of the hills; and night
+ Swung incense clouds of mist in creeping lines
+That twisted through the tree-trunks, where the light
+ Groped through the arches of the silent pines:
+And he, beside the lonely path he trod,
+Lay, tombed in splendour, in the House of God.
+
+
+
+
+Eventide
+
+
+
+The day is past and the toilers cease;
+The land grows dim 'mid the shadows grey,
+And hearts are glad, for the dark brings peace
+            At the close of day.
+
+Each weary toiler, with lingering pace,
+As he homeward turns, with the long day done,
+Looks out to the west, with the light on his face
+            Of the setting sun.
+
+Yet some see not (with their sin-dimmed eyes)
+The promise of rest in the fading light;
+But the clouds loom dark in the angry skies
+            At the fall of night.
+
+And some see only a golden sky
+Where the elms their welcoming arms stretch wide
+To the calling rooks, as they homeward fly
+            At the eventide.
+
+It speaks of peace that comes after strife,
+Of the rest He sends to the hearts He tried,
+Of the calm that follows the stormiest life --
+            God's eventide.
+
+
+
+
+Upon Watts' Picture "Sic Transit"
+
+     "What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have."
+
+
+
+But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life,
+ The waving of the banners, and the rattle of the spears,
+The clash of sword and harness, and the madness of the strife;
+ To-night begin the silence and the peace of endless years.
+
+          (One sings within.)
+
+But yesterday the glory and the prize,
+ And best of all, to lay it at her feet,
+To find my guerdon in her speaking eyes:
+ I grudge them not, -- they pass, albeit sweet.
+
+The ring of spears, the winning of the fight,
+ The careless song, the cup, the love of friends,
+The earth in spring -- to live, to feel the light --
+ 'Twas good the while it lasted:  here it ends.
+
+Remain the well-wrought deed in honour done,
+ The dole for Christ's dear sake, the words that fall
+In kindliness upon some outcast one, --
+ They seemed so little:  now they are my All.
+
+
+
+
+A Song of Comfort
+
+     "Sleep, weary ones, while ye may --
+         Sleep, oh, sleep!"
+                              Eugene Field.
+
+
+
+Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
+The soft wind sang to the dead below:
+ "Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
+ And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
+ The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
+ And the task that was joyous be weary at last."
+
+To the winter sky when the nights were long
+The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
+ "Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
+ And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
+ The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
+ And the path grow rough when the night came down."
+
+In the grey twilight of the autumn eves,
+It sighed as it sang through the dying leaves:
+ "Ye think with regret that the world was bright,
+ That your path was short and your task was light;
+ The path, though short, was perhaps the best
+ And the toil was sweet, that it led to rest."
+
+
+
+
+The Pilgrims
+
+
+
+An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,
+ Where every beam that broke the leaden sky
+Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;
+ Some clustered graves where half our memories lie;
+And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh:
+            And this was Life.
+
+Wherein we did another's burden seek,
+ The tired feet we helped upon the road,
+The hand we gave the weary and the weak,
+ The miles we lightened one another's load,
+When, faint to falling, onward yet we strode:
+            This too was Life.
+
+Till, at the upland, as we turned to go
+ Amid fair meadows, dusky in the night,
+The mists fell back upon the road below;
+ Broke on our tired eyes the western light;
+The very graves were for a moment bright:
+            And this was Death.
+
+
+
+
+The Shadow of the Cross
+
+
+
+At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep
+From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,
+
+An angel mused:  "Is there good or ill
+In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill
+
+'Round the cross a mid-day twilight fell
+That darkened earth and o'ershadowed hell?"
+
+Through the streets of a city the angel sped;
+Like an open scroll men's hearts he read.
+
+In a monarch's ear his courtiers lied
+And humble faces hid hearts of pride.
+
+Men's hate waxed hot, and their hearts grew cold,
+As they haggled and fought for the lust of gold.
+
+Despairing, he cried, "After all these years
+Is there naught but hatred and strife and tears?"
+
+He found two waifs in an attic bare;
+-- A single crust was their meagre fare --
+
+One strove to quiet the other's cries,
+And the love-light dawned in her famished eyes
+
+As she kissed the child with a motherly air:
+"I don't need mine, you can have my share."
+
+Then the angel knew that the earthly cross
+And the sorrow and shame were not wholly loss.
+
+At dawn, when hushed was earth's busy hum
+And men looked not for their Christ to come,
+
+From the attic poor to the palace grand,
+The King and the beggar went hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+The Night Cometh
+
+
+
+Cometh the night.  The wind falls low,
+The trees swing slowly to and fro:
+ Around the church the headstones grey
+ Cluster, like children strayed away
+But found again, and folded so.
+
+No chiding look doth she bestow:
+If she is glad, they cannot know;
+ If ill or well they spend their day,
+            Cometh the night.
+
+Singing or sad, intent they go;
+They do not see the shadows grow;
+ "There yet is time," they lightly say,
+ "Before our work aside we lay";
+Their task is but half-done, and lo!
+            Cometh the night.
+
+
+
+
+In Due Season
+
+
+
+If night should come and find me at my toil,
+ When all Life's day I had, tho' faintly, wrought,
+And shallow furrows, cleft in stony soil
+ Were all my labour:  Shall I count it naught
+
+If only one poor gleaner, weak of hand,
+ Shall pick a scanty sheaf where I have sown?
+"Nay, for of thee the Master doth demand
+ Thy work:  the harvest rests with Him alone."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+John McCrae
+
+  An Essay in Character by Sir Andrew Macphail
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  I
+
+In Flanders Fields
+
+
+
+"In Flanders Fields", the piece of verse from which this little book
+takes its title, first appeared in `Punch' in the issue of December 8th,
+1915.  At the time I was living in Flanders at a convent in front of Locre,
+in shelter of Kemmel Hill, which lies seven miles south and slightly west
+of Ypres.  The piece bore no signature, but it was unmistakably
+from the hand of John McCrae.
+
+From this convent of women which was the headquarters of the 6th Canadian
+Field Ambulance, I wrote to John McCrae, who was then at Boulogne,
+accusing him of the authorship, and furnished him with evidence.
+From memory -- since at the front one carries one book only --
+I quoted to him another piece of his own verse, entitled "The Night Cometh":
+
+    "Cometh the night.  The wind falls low,
+     The trees swing slowly to and fro;
+      Around the church the headstones grey
+      Cluster, like children stray'd away,
+     But found again, and folded so."
+
+It will be observed at once by reference to the text that in form
+the two poems are identical.  They contain the same number of lines and feet
+as surely as all sonnets do.  Each travels upon two rhymes
+with the members of a broken couplet in widely separated refrain.
+To the casual reader this much is obvious, but there are many subtleties
+in the verse which made the authorship inevitable.  It was a form upon which
+he had worked for years, and made his own.  When the moment arrived
+the medium was ready.  No other medium could have so well conveyed
+the thought.
+
+This familiarity with his verse was not a matter of accident.
+For many years I was editor of the `University Magazine',
+and those who are curious about such things may discover
+that one half of the poems contained in this little book
+were first published upon its pages.  This magazine had its origin
+in McGill University, Montreal, in the year 1902.  Four years later
+its borders were enlarged to the wider term, and it strove to express
+an educated opinion upon questions immediately concerning Canada,
+and to treat freely in a literary way all matters which have to do
+with politics, industry, philosophy, science, and art.
+
+To this magazine during those years John McCrae contributed all his verse.
+It was therefore not unseemly that I should have written to him,
+when "In Flanders Fields" appeared in `Punch'.  Amongst his papers
+I find my poor letter, and many others of which something more might be made
+if one were concerned merely with the literary side of his life
+rather than with his life itself.  Two references will be enough.
+Early in 1905 he offered "The Pilgrims" for publication.
+I notified him of the place assigned to it in the magazine,
+and added a few words of appreciation, and after all these years
+it has come back to me.
+
+The letter is dated February 9th, 1905, and reads:  "I place the poem
+next to my own buffoonery.  It is the real stuff of poetry.
+How did you make it?  What have you to do with medicine?
+I was charmed with it:  the thought high, the image perfect,
+the expression complete; not too reticent, not too full.
+Videntes autem stellam gavisi sunt gaudio magno valde.
+In our own tongue, -- `slainte filidh'."  To his mother he wrote,
+"the Latin is translatable as, `seeing the star they rejoiced
+with exceeding gladness'."  For the benefit of those whose education
+has proceeded no further than the Latin, it may be explained
+that the two last words mean, "Hail to the poet".
+
+To the inexperienced there is something portentous about an appearance
+in print and something mysterious about the business of an editor.
+A legend has already grown up around the publication of "In Flanders Fields"
+in `Punch'.  The truth is, "that the poem was offered in the usual way
+and accepted; that is all."  The usual way of offering a piece to an editor
+is to put it in an envelope with a postage stamp outside to carry it there,
+and a stamp inside to carry it back.  Nothing else helps.
+
+An editor is merely a man who knows his right hand from his left,
+good from evil, having the honesty of a kitchen cook
+who will not spoil his confection by favour for a friend.
+Fear of a foe is not a temptation, since editors are too humble and harmless
+to have any.  There are of course certain slight offices
+which an editor can render, especially to those whose writings
+he does not intend to print, but John McCrae required none of these.
+His work was finished to the last point.  He would bring his piece in his hand
+and put it on the table.  A wise editor knows when to keep his mouth shut;
+but now I am free to say that he never understood the nicety
+of the semi-colon, and his writing was too heavily stopped.
+
+He was not of those who might say, -- take it or leave it; but rather, --
+look how perfect it is; and it was so.  Also he was the first to recognize
+that an editor has some rights and prejudices, that certain words
+make him sick; that certain other words he reserves for his own use, --
+"meticulous" once a year, "adscititious" once in a life time.
+This explains why editors write so little.  In the end,
+out of mere good nature, or seeing the futility of it all,
+they contribute their words to contributors and write no more.
+
+The volume of verse as here printed is small.  The volume might be enlarged;
+it would not be improved.  To estimate the value and institute a comparison
+of those herein set forth would be a congenial but useless task,
+which may well be left to those whose profession it is to offer instruction
+to the young.  To say that "In Flanders Fields" is not the best
+would involve one in controversy.  It did give expression to a mood
+which at the time was universal, and will remain as a permanent record
+when the mood is passed away.
+
+The poem was first called to my attention by a Sapper officer, then Major,
+now Brigadier.  He brought the paper in his hand from his billet
+in Dranoutre.  It was printed on page 468, and Mr. `Punch' will be glad
+to be told that, in his annual index, in the issue of December 29th, 1915,
+he has mispelled the author's name, which is perhaps the only mistake
+he ever made.  This officer could himself weave the sonnet with deft fingers,
+and he pointed out many deep things.  It is to the sappers
+the army always goes for "technical material".
+
+The poem, he explained, consists of thirteen lines in iambic tetrameter
+and two lines of two iambics each; in all, one line more
+than the sonnet's count.  There are two rhymes only, since the short lines
+must be considered blank, and are, in fact, identical.  But it is
+a difficult mode.  It is true, he allowed, that the octet of the sonnet
+has only two rhymes, but these recur only four times,
+and the liberty of the sestet tempers its despotism, --
+which I thought a pretty phrase.  He pointed out the dangers inherent
+in a restricted rhyme, and cited the case of Browning, the great rhymster,
+who was prone to resort to any rhyme, and frequently ended in absurdity,
+finding it easier to make a new verse than to make an end.
+
+At great length -- but the December evenings in Flanders are long,
+how long, O Lord! -- this Sapper officer demonstrated the skill
+with which the rhymes are chosen.  They are vocalized.
+Consonant endings would spoil the whole effect.  They reiterate O and I,
+not the O of pain and the Ay of assent, but the O of wonder, of hope,
+of aspiration; and the I of personal pride, of jealous immortality,
+of the Ego against the Universe.  They are, he went on to expound,
+a recurrence of the ancient question:  "How are the dead raised,
+and with what body do they come?"  "How shall I bear my light across?"
+and of the defiant cry:  "If Christ be not raised, then is our faith vain."
+
+The theme has three phases:  the first a calm, a deadly calm,
+opening statement in five lines; the second in four lines,
+an explanation, a regret, a reiteration of the first; the third,
+without preliminary crescendo, breaking out into passionate adjuration
+in vivid metaphor, a poignant appeal which is at once a blessing and a curse.
+In the closing line is a satisfying return to the first phase, --
+and the thing is done.  One is so often reminded of the poverty
+of men's invention, their best being so incomplete, their greatest
+so trivial, that one welcomes what -- this Sapper officer surmised --
+may become a new and fixed mode of expression in verse.
+
+As to the theme itself -- I am using his words:  what is his is mine;
+what is mine is his -- the interest is universal.  The dead, still conscious,
+fallen in a noble cause, see their graves overblown in a riot of poppy bloom.
+The poppy is the emblem of sleep.  The dead desire to sleep undisturbed,
+but yet curiously take an interest in passing events.  They regret
+that they have not been permitted to live out their life to its normal end.
+They call on the living to finish their task, else they shall not sink
+into that complete repose which they desire, in spite of the balm
+of the poppy.  Formalists may protest that the poet is not sincere,
+since it is the seed and not the flower that produces sleep.
+They might as well object that the poet has no right to impersonate the dead.
+We common folk know better.  We know that in personating the dear dead,
+and calling in bell-like tones on the inarticulate living,
+the poet shall be enabled to break the lightnings of the Beast,
+and thereby he, being himself, alas! dead, yet speaketh; and shall speak,
+to ones and twos and a host.  As it is written in resonant bronze:
+VIVOS . VOCO . MORTUOS . PLANGO . FULGURA . FRANGO:
+words cast by this officer upon a church bell which still rings
+in far away Orwell in memory of his father -- and of mine.
+
+By this time the little room was cold.  For some reason the guns had awakened
+in the Salient.  An Indian trooper who had just come up,
+and did not yet know the orders, blew "Lights out", -- on a cavalry trumpet.
+The sappers work by night.  The officer turned and went his way
+to his accursed trenches, leaving the verse with me.
+
+John McCrae witnessed only once the raw earth of Flanders hide its shame
+in the warm scarlet glory of the poppy.  Others have watched
+this resurrection of the flowers in four successive seasons,
+a fresh miracle every time it occurs.  Also they have observed
+the rows of crosses lengthen, the torch thrown, caught, and carried
+to victory.  The dead may sleep.  We have not broken faith with them.
+
+It is little wonder then that "In Flanders Fields" has become
+the poem of the army.  The soldiers have learned it with their hearts,
+which is quite a different thing from committing it to memory.
+It circulates, as a song should circulate, by the living word of mouth,
+not by printed characters.  That is the true test of poetry, --
+its insistence on making itself learnt by heart.  The army has varied
+the text; but each variation only serves to reveal more clearly
+the mind of the maker.  The army says, "AMONG the crosses";
+"felt dawn AND sunset glow"; "LIVED and were loved".  The army may be right:
+it usually is.
+
+Nor has any piece of verse in recent years been more widely known
+in the civilian world.  It was used on every platform from which men
+were being adjured to adventure their lives or their riches
+in the great trial through which the present generation has passed.
+Many "replies" have been made.  The best I have seen was written
+in the `New York Evening Post'.  None but those who were prepared to die
+before Vimy Ridge that early April day of 1916 will ever feel fully
+the great truth of Mr. Lillard's opening lines, as they speak
+for all Americans:
+  
+   "Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead.
+    The fight that ye so bravely led
+          We've taken up."
+  
+They did -- and bravely.  They heard the cry -- "If ye break faith,
+we shall not sleep."
+
+
+
+
+  II
+
+With the Guns
+
+
+
+If there was nothing remarkable about the publication of "In Flanders Fields",
+there was something momentous in the moment of writing it.  And yet
+it was a sure instinct which prompted the writer to send it to `Punch'.
+A rational man wishes to know the news of the world in which he lives;
+and if he is interested in life, he is eager to know how men feel
+and comport themselves amongst the events which are passing.
+For this purpose `Punch' is the great newspaper of the world,
+and these lines describe better than any other how men felt
+in that great moment.
+
+It was in April, 1915.  The enemy was in the full cry of victory.
+All that remained for him was to occupy Paris, as once he did before,
+and to seize the Channel ports.  Then France, England, and the world
+were doomed.  All winter the German had spent in repairing his plans,
+which had gone somewhat awry on the Marne.  He had devised his final stroke,
+and it fell upon the Canadians at Ypres.  This battle,
+known as the second battle of Ypres, culminated on April 22nd,
+but it really extended over the whole month.
+
+The inner history of war is written from the recorded impressions of men
+who have endured it.  John McCrae in a series of letters to his mother,
+cast in the form of a diary, has set down in words the impressions
+which this event of the war made upon a peculiarly sensitive mind.
+The account is here transcribed without any attempt at "amplification",
+or "clarifying" by notes upon incidents or references to places.
+These are only too well known.
+
+
+==
+                                        Friday, April 23rd, 1915.
+
+As we moved up last evening, there was heavy firing about 4.30 on our left,
+the hour at which the general attack with gas was made
+when the French line broke.  We could see the shells bursting over Ypres,
+and in a small village to our left, meeting General ----, C.R.A.,
+of one of the divisions, he ordered us to halt for orders.
+We sent forward notifications to our Headquarters, and sent out orderlies
+to get in touch with the batteries of the farther forward brigades
+already in action.  The story of these guns will be read elsewhere.
+They had a tough time, but got away safely, and did wonderful service.
+One battery fired in two opposite directions at once,
+and both batteries fired at point blank, open sights, at Germans in the open.
+They were at times quite without infantry on their front,
+for their position was behind the French to the left of the British line.
+
+As we sat on the road we began to see the French stragglers --
+men without arms, wounded men, teams, wagons, civilians, refugees --
+some by the roads, some across country, all talking, shouting --
+the very picture of debacle.  I must say they were the "tag enders"
+of a fighting line rather than the line itself.  They streamed on,
+and shouted to us scraps of not too inspiriting information
+while we stood and took our medicine, and picked out gun positions
+in the fields in case we had to go in there and then.  The men were splendid;
+not a word; not a shake, and it was a terrific test.  Traffic whizzed by --
+ambulances, transport, ammunition, supplies, despatch riders --
+and the shells thundered into the town, or burst high in the air nearer us,
+and the refugees streamed.  Women, old men, little children,
+hopeless, tearful, quiet or excited, tired, dodging the traffic, --
+and the wounded in singles or in groups.  Here and there I could give
+a momentary help, and the ambulances picked up as they could.
+So the cold moonlight night wore on -- no change save that
+the towers of Ypres showed up against the glare of the city burning;
+and the shells still sailed in.
+
+At 9.30 our ammunition column (the part that had been "in") appeared.
+Major ---- had waited, like Casabianca, for orders until the Germans were
+500 yards away; then he started, getting safely away save for one wagon lost,
+and some casualties in men and horses.  He found our column,
+and we prepared to send forward ammunition as soon as we could learn
+where the batteries had taken up position in retiring, for retire they had to.
+Eleven, twelve, and finally grey day broke, and we still waited.
+At 3.45 word came to go in and support a French counterattack at 4.30 A.M.
+Hastily we got the order spread; it was 4 A.M. and three miles to go.
+
+Of one's feelings all this night -- of the asphyxiated French soldiers --
+of the women and children -- of the cheery, steady British reinforcements
+that moved up quietly past us, going up, not back -- I could write,
+but you can imagine.
+
+We took the road at once, and went up at the gallop.  The Colonel rode ahead
+to scout a position (we had only four guns, part of the ammunition column,
+and the brigade staff; the 1st and 4th batteries were back in reserve
+at our last billet).  Along the roads we went, and made our place on time,
+pulled up for ten minutes just short of the position, where I put Bonfire
+[his horse] with my groom in a farmyard, and went forward on foot --
+only a quarter of a mile or so -- then we advanced.  Bonfire had soon to move;
+a shell killed a horse about four yards away from him, and he wisely took
+other ground.  Meantime we went on into the position we were to occupy
+for seventeen days, though we could not guess that.  I can hardly say more
+than that it was near the Yser Canal.
+
+We got into action at once, under heavy gunfire.  We were
+to the left entirely of the British line, and behind French troops,
+and so we remained for eight days.  A Colonel of the R.A., known to fame,
+joined us and camped with us; he was our link with the French Headquarters,
+and was in local command of the guns in this locality.  When he left us
+eight days later he said, "I am glad to get out of this hell-hole."
+He was a great comfort to us, for he is very capable, and the entire battle
+was largely fought "on our own", following the requests of the Infantry
+on our front, and scarcely guided by our own staff at all.
+We at once set out to register our targets, and almost at once
+had to get into steady firing on quite a large sector of front.
+We dug in the guns as quickly as we could, and took as Headquarters
+some infantry trenches already sunk on a ridge near the canal.
+We were subject from the first to a steady and accurate shelling,
+for we were all but in sight, as were the German trenches
+about 2000 yards to our front.  At times the fire would come in salvos
+quickly repeated.  Bursts of fire would be made for ten or fifteen minutes
+at a time.  We got all varieties of projectile, from 3 inch to 8 inch,
+or perhaps 10 inch; the small ones usually as air bursts,
+the larger percussion and air, and the heaviest percussion only.
+
+My work began almost from the start -- steady but never overwhelming,
+except perhaps once for a few minutes.  A little cottage behind our ridge
+served as a cook-house, but was so heavily hit the second day
+that we had to be chary of it.  During bursts of fire I usually took
+the back slope of the sharply crested ridge for what shelter it offered.
+At 3 our 1st and 4th arrived, and went into action at once
+a few hundred yards in our rear.  Wires were at once put out,
+to be cut by shells hundreds and hundreds of times, but always repaired
+by our indefatigable linemen.  So the day wore on; in the night the shelling
+still kept up:  three different German attacks were made and repulsed.
+If we suffered by being close up, the Germans suffered from us,
+for already tales of good shooting came down to us.  I got some sleep
+despite the constant firing, for we had none last night.
+
+
+                                        Saturday, April 24th, 1915.
+
+Behold us now anything less than two miles north of Ypres
+on the west side of the canal; this runs north, each bank flanked
+with high elms, with bare trunks of the familiar Netherlands type.
+A few yards to the West a main road runs, likewise bordered;
+the Censor will allow me to say that on the high bank between these
+we had our headquarters; the ridge is perhaps fifteen to twenty feet high,
+and slopes forward fifty yards to the water, the back is more steep,
+and slopes quickly to a little subsidiary water way, deep but dirty.
+Where the guns were I shall not say; but they were not far,
+and the German aeroplanes that viewed us daily with all but impunity
+knew very well.  A road crossed over the canal, and interrupted the ridge;
+across the road from us was our billet -- the place we cooked in, at least,
+and where we usually took our meals.  Looking to the south between the trees,
+we could see the ruins of the city:  to the front on the sky line,
+with rolling ground in the front, pitted by French trenches, the German lines;
+to the left front, several farms and a windmill, and farther left,
+again near the canal, thicker trees and more farms.  The farms and windmills
+were soon burnt.  Several farms we used for observing posts were also
+quickly burnt during the next three or four days.  All along behind us
+at varying distances French and British guns; the flashes at night
+lit up the sky.
+
+These high trees were at once a protection and a danger.
+Shells that struck them were usually destructive.  When we came in
+the foliage was still very thin.  Along the road, which was constantly shelled
+"on spec" by the Germans, one saw all the sights of war:
+wounded men limping or carried, ambulances, trains of supply, troops,
+army mules, and tragedies.  I saw one bicycle orderly:  a shell exploded
+and he seemed to pedal on for eight or ten revolutions and then collapsed
+in a heap -- dead.  Straggling soldiers would be killed or wounded,
+horses also, until it got to be a nightmare.  I used to shudder every time
+I saw wagons or troops on that road.  My dugout looked out on it.
+I got a square hole, 8 by 8, dug in the side of the hill (west),
+roofed over with remnants to keep out the rain, and a little sandbag parapet
+on the back to prevent pieces of "back-kick shells" from coming in,
+or prematures from our own or the French guns for that matter.
+Some straw on the floor completed it.  The ground was treacherous
+and a slip the first night nearly buried ----.  So we had to be content
+with walls straight up and down, and trust to the height of the bank
+for safety.  All places along the bank were more or less alike,
+all squirrel holes.
+
+This morning we supported a heavy French attack at 4.30;
+there had been three German attacks in the night, and everyone was tired.
+We got heavily shelled.  In all eight or ten of our trees were cut by shells
+-- cut right off, the upper part of the tree subsiding heavily
+and straight down, as a usual thing.  One would think a piece a foot long
+was just instantly cut out; and these trees were about 18 inches in diameter.
+The gas fumes came very heavily:  some blew down from the infantry trenches,
+some came from the shells:  one's eyes smarted, and breathing
+was very laboured.  Up to noon to-day we fired 2500 rounds.  Last night
+Col. Morrison and I slept at a French Colonel's headquarters near by,
+and in the night our room was filled up with wounded.  I woke up
+and shared my bed with a chap with "a wounded leg and a chill".
+Probably thirty wounded were brought into the one little room.
+
+Col. ----, R.A., kept us in communication with the French General
+in whose command we were.  I bunked down in the trench on the top
+of the ridge:  the sky was red with the glare of the city still burning,
+and we could hear the almost constant procession of large shells sailing over
+from our left front into the city:  the crashes of their explosion
+shook the ground where we were.  After a terribly hard day,
+professionally and otherwise, I slept well, but it rained
+and the trench was awfully muddy and wet.
+
+
+                                        Sunday, April 25th, 1915.
+
+The weather brightened up, and we got at it again.  This day we had
+several heavy attacks, prefaced by heavy artillery fire; these bursts of fire
+would result in our getting 100 to 150 rounds right on us or nearby:
+the heavier our fire (which was on the trenches entirely) the heavier theirs.
+
+Our food supply came up at dusk in wagons, and the water was any we could get,
+but of course treated with chloride of lime.  The ammunition had to be
+brought down the roads at the gallop, and the more firing the more wagons.
+The men would quickly carry the rounds to the guns, as the wagons had to halt
+behind our hill.  The good old horses would swing around at the gallop,
+pull up in an instant, and stand puffing and blowing, but with their heads up,
+as if to say, "Wasn't that well done?"  It makes you want to kiss
+their dear old noses, and assure them of a peaceful pasture once more.
+To-day we got our dressing station dugout complete, and slept there at night.
+
+Three farms in succession burned on our front -- colour in the otherwise dark.
+The flashes of shells over the front and rear in all directions.
+The city still burning and the procession still going on.
+I dressed a number of French wounded; one Turco prayed to Allah and Mohammed
+all the time I was dressing his wound.  On the front field one can see
+the dead lying here and there, and in places where an assault has been
+they lie very thick on the front slopes of the German trenches.
+Our telephone wagon team hit by a shell; two horses killed
+and another wounded.  I did what I could for the wounded one,
+and he subsequently got well.  This night, beginning after dark,
+we got a terrible shelling, which kept up till 2 or 3 in the morning.
+Finally I got to sleep, though it was still going on.  We must have got
+a couple of hundred rounds, in single or pairs.  Every one burst over us,
+would light up the dugout, and every hit in front would shake the ground
+and bring down small bits of earth on us, or else the earth thrown
+into the air by the explosion would come spattering down on our roof,
+and into the front of the dugout.  Col. Morrison tried the mess house,
+but the shelling was too heavy, and he and the adjutant joined
+Cosgrave and me, and we four spent an anxious night there in the dark.
+One officer was on watch "on the bridge" (as we called the trench
+at the top of the ridge) with the telephones.
+
+
+                                        Monday, April 26th, 1915.
+
+Another day of heavy actions, but last night much French and British artillery
+has come in, and the place is thick with Germans.  There are many prematures
+(with so much firing) but the pieces are usually spread before they get to us.
+It is disquieting, however, I must say.  And all the time the birds sing
+in the trees over our heads.  Yesterday up to noon we fired 3000 rounds
+for the twenty-four hours; to-day we have fired much less,
+but we have registered fresh fronts, and burned some farms
+behind the German trenches.  About six the fire died down,
+and we had a peaceful evening and night, and Cosgrave and I in the dugout
+made good use of it.  The Colonel has an individual dugout,
+and Dodds sleeps "topside" in the trench.  To all this, put in a background
+of anxiety lest the line break, for we are just where it broke before.
+
+
+                                        Tuesday, April 27th, 1915.
+
+This morning again registering batteries on new points.
+At 1.30 a heavy attack was prepared by the French and ourselves.
+The fire was very heavy for half an hour and the enemy got busy too.
+I had to cross over to the batteries during it, an unpleasant journey.
+More gas attacks in the afternoon.  The French did not appear
+to press the attack hard, but in the light of subsequent events
+it probably was only a feint.  It seems likely that about this time
+our people began to thin out the artillery again for use elsewhere;
+but this did not at once become apparent.  At night usually
+the heavies farther back take up the story, and there is a duel.
+The Germans fire on our roads after dark to catch reliefs and transport.
+I suppose ours do the same.
+
+
+                                        Wednesday, April 28th, 1915.
+
+I have to confess to an excellent sleep last night.  At times anxiety says,
+"I don't want a meal," but experience says "you need your food,"
+so I attend regularly to that.  The billet is not too safe either.
+Much German air reconnaissance over us, and heavy firing from both sides
+during the day.  At 6.45 we again prepared a heavy artillery attack,
+but the infantry made little attempt to go on.  We are perhaps
+the "chopping block", and our "preparations" may be chiefly designed
+to prevent detachments of troops being sent from our front elsewhere.
+
+I have said nothing of what goes on on our right and left;
+but it is equally part and parcel of the whole game; this eight mile front
+is constantly heavily engaged.  At intervals, too, they bombard Ypres.
+Our back lines, too, have to be constantly shifted on account of shell fire,
+and we have desultory but constant losses there.  In the evening
+rifle fire gets more frequent, and bullets are constantly singing over us.
+Some of them are probably ricochets, for we are 1800 yards, or nearly,
+from the nearest German trench.
+
+
+                                        Thursday, April 29th, 1915.
+
+This morning our billet was hit.  We fire less these days,
+but still a good deal.  There was a heavy French attack on our left.
+The "gas" attacks can be seen from here.  The yellow cloud rising up
+is for us a signal to open, and we do.  The wind is from our side to-day,
+and a good thing it is.  Several days ago during the firing
+a big Oxford-grey dog, with beautiful brown eyes, came to us in a panic.
+He ran to me, and pressed his head HARD against my leg.
+So I got him a safe place and he sticks by us.  We call him Fleabag,
+for he looks like it.
+
+This night they shelled us again heavily for some hours --
+the same shorts, hits, overs on percussion, and great yellow-green air bursts.
+One feels awfully irritated by the constant din -- a mixture of anger
+and apprehension.
+
+
+                                        Friday, April 30th, 1915.
+
+Thick mist this morning, and relative quietness; but before it cleared
+the Germans started again to shell us.  At 10 it cleared,
+and from 10 to 2 we fired constantly.  The French advanced,
+and took some ground on our left front and a batch of prisoners.
+This was at a place we call Twin Farms.  Our men looked curiously
+at the Boches as they were marched through.  Some better activity
+in the afternoon by the Allies' aeroplanes.  The German planes
+have had it too much their way lately.  Many of to-day's shells
+have been very large -- 10 or 12 inch; a lot of tremendous holes
+dug in the fields just behind us.
+
+
+                                        Saturday, May 1st, 1915.
+
+May day!  Heavy bombardment at intervals through the day.
+Another heavy artillery preparation at 3.25, but no French advance.
+We fail to understand why, but orders go.  We suffered somewhat
+during the day.  Through the evening and night heavy firing at intervals.
+
+
+                                        Sunday, May 2nd, 1915.
+
+Heavy gunfire again this morning.  Lieut. H---- was killed at the guns.
+His diary's last words were, "It has quieted a little and I shall try
+to get a good sleep."  I said the Committal Service over him,
+as well as I could from memory.  A soldier's death!
+Batteries again registering barrages or barriers of fire at set ranges.
+At 3 the Germans attacked, preceded by gas clouds.  Fighting went on
+for an hour and a half, during which their guns hammered heavily
+with some loss to us.  The French lines are very uneasy,
+and we are correspondingly anxious.  The infantry fire was very heavy,
+and we fired incessantly, keeping on into the night.  Despite the heavy fire
+I got asleep at 12, and slept until daylight which comes at 3.
+
+
+                                        Monday, May 3rd, 1915.
+
+A clear morning, and the accursed German aeroplanes over our positions again.
+They are usually fired at, but no luck.  To-day a shell on our hill
+dug out a cannon ball about six inches in diameter -- probably of Napoleon's
+or earlier times -- heavily rusted.  A German attack began,
+but half an hour of artillery fire drove it back.  Major ----, R.A.,
+was up forward, and could see the German reserves.  Our 4th was turned on:
+first round 100 over; shortened and went into gunfire, and his report
+was that the effect was perfect.  The same occurred again in the evening,
+and again at midnight.  The Germans were reported to be constantly massing
+for attack, and we as constantly "went to them".  The German guns
+shelled us as usual at intervals.  This must get very tiresome to read;
+but through it all, it must be mentioned that the constantly broken
+communications have to be mended, rations and ammunition brought up,
+the wounded to be dressed and got away.  Our dugouts have the French Engineers
+and French Infantry next door by turns.  They march in and out.
+The back of the hill is a network of wires, so that one has to go carefully.
+
+
+                                        Tuesday, May 4th, 1915.
+
+Despite intermittent shelling and some casualties the quietest day yet;
+but we live in an uneasy atmosphere as German attacks are constantly
+being projected, and our communications are interrupted and scrappy.
+We get no news of any sort and have just to sit tight and hold on.
+Evening closed in rainy and dark.  Our dugout is very slenderly
+provided against it, and we get pretty wet and very dirty.
+In the quieter morning hours we get a chance of a wash
+and occasionally a shave.
+
+
+                                        Wednesday, May 5th, 1915.
+
+Heavily hammered in the morning from 7 to 9, but at 9 it let up;
+the sun came out and things looked better.  Evidently our line
+has again been thinned of artillery and the requisite minimum to hold is left.
+There were German attacks to our right, just out of our area.
+Later on we and they both fired heavily, the first battery getting it
+especially hot.  The planes over us again and again, to coach the guns.
+An attack expected at dusk, but it turned only to heavy night shelling,
+so that with our fire, theirs, and the infantry cracking away constantly,
+we got sleep in small quantity all night; bullets whizzing over us constantly.
+Heavy rain from 5 to 8, and everything wet except the far-in corner
+of the dugout, where we mass our things to keep them as dry as we may.
+
+
+                                        Thursday, May 6th, 1915.
+
+After the rain a bright morning; the leaves and blossoms are coming out.
+We ascribe our quietude to a welcome flock of allied planes
+which are over this morning.  The Germans attacked at eleven,
+and again at six in the afternoon, each meaning a waking up of heavy artillery
+on the whole front.  In the evening we had a little rain at intervals,
+but it was light.
+
+
+                                        Friday, May 7th, 1915.
+
+A bright morning early, but clouded over later.  The Germans gave it to us
+very heavily.  There was heavy fighting to the south-east of us.
+Two attacks or threats, and we went in again.
+
+
+                                        Saturday, May 8th, 1915.
+
+For the last three days we have been under British divisional control,
+and supporting our own men who have been put farther to the left,
+till they are almost in front of us.  It is an added comfort.
+We have four officers out with various infantry regiments
+for observation and co-operation; they have to stick it in trenches,
+as all the houses and barns are burned.  The whole front is constantly ablaze
+with big gunfire; the racket never ceases.  We have now to do
+most of the work for our left, as our line appears to be much thinner
+than it was.  A German attack followed the shelling at 7;
+we were fighting hard till 12, and less regularly all the afternoon.
+We suffered much, and at one time were down to seven guns.
+Of these two were smoking at every joint, and the levers were so hot
+that the gunners used sacking for their hands.  The pace is now much hotter,
+and the needs of the infantry for fire more insistent.
+The guns are in bad shape by reason of dirt, injuries, and heat.
+The wind fortunately blows from us, so there is no gas,
+but the attacks are still very heavy.  Evening brought a little quiet,
+but very disquieting news (which afterwards proved untrue);
+and we had to face a possible retirement.  You may imagine our state of mind,
+unable to get anything sure in the uncertainty, except that
+we should stick out as long as the guns would fire, and we could fire them.
+That sort of night brings a man down to his "bare skin", I promise you.
+The night was very cold, and not a cheerful one.
+
+
+                                        Sunday, May 9th, 1915.
+
+At 4 we were ordered to get ready to move, and the Adjutant picked out
+new retirement positions; but a little later better news came,
+and the daylight and sun revived us a bit.  As I sat in my dugout
+a little white and black dog with tan spots bolted in over the parapet,
+during heavy firing, and going to the farthest corner began to dig furiously.
+Having scraped out a pathetic little hole two inches deep,
+she sat down and shook, looking most plaintively at me.  A few minutes later,
+her owner came along, a French soldier.  Bissac was her name,
+but she would not leave me at the time.  When I sat down a little later,
+she stole out and shyly crawled in between me and the wall;
+she stayed by me all day, and I hope got later on to safe quarters.
+
+Firing kept up all day.  In thirty hours we had fired 3600 rounds,
+and at times with seven, eight, or nine guns; our wire cut and repaired
+eighteen times.  Orders came to move, and we got ready.  At dusk
+we got the guns out by hand, and all batteries assembled at a given spot
+in comparative safety.  We were much afraid they would open on us,
+for at 10 o'clock they gave us 100 or 150 rounds, hitting the trench parapet
+again and again.  However, we were up the road, the last wagon
+half a mile away before they opened.  One burst near me,
+and splattered some pieces around, but we got clear,
+and by 12 were out of the usual fire zone.  Marched all night,
+tired as could be, but happy to be clear.
+
+I was glad to get on dear old Bonfire again.  We made about sixteen miles,
+and got to our billets at dawn.  I had three or four hours' sleep,
+and arose to a peaceful breakfast.  We shall go back to the line elsewhere
+very soon, but it is a present relief, and the next place
+is sure to be better, for it cannot be worse.  Much of this narrative
+is bald and plain, but it tells our part in a really great battle.
+I have only had hasty notes to go by; in conversation
+there is much one could say that would be of greater interest.
+Heard of the `Lusitania' disaster on our road out.  A terrible affair!
+==
+
+
+Here ends the account of his part in this memorable battle,
+and here follow some general observations upon the experience:
+
+
+==
+                                        Northern France, May 10th, 1915.
+
+We got here to refit and rest this morning at 4, having marched
+last night at 10.  The general impression in my mind is of a nightmare.
+We have been in the most bitter of fights.  For seventeen days
+and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off,
+nor our boots even, except occasionally.  In all that time
+while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds,
+and it was sticking to our utmost by a weak line all but ready to break,
+knowing nothing of what was going on, and depressed by reports
+of anxious infantry.  The men and the divisions are worthy of all praise
+that can be given.  It did not end in four days when many of our infantry
+were taken out.  It kept on at fever heat till yesterday.
+
+This, of course, is the second battle of Ypres, or the battle of the Yser,
+I do not know which.  At one time we were down to seven guns,
+but those guns were smoking at every joint, the gunners using cloth
+to handle the breech levers because of the heat.  We had three batteries
+in action with four guns added from the other units.  Our casualties
+were half the number of men in the firing line.  The horse lines
+and the wagon lines farther back suffered less, but the Brigade list
+has gone far higher than any artillery normal.  I know one brigade R.A.
+that was in the Mons retreat and had about the same.  I have done
+what fell to hand.  My clothes, boots, kit, and dugout at various times
+were sadly bloody.  Two of our batteries are reduced to two officers each.
+We have had constant accurate shell-fire, but we have given back no less.
+And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead,
+the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way.
+
+During all this time, we have been behind French troops,
+and only helping our own people by oblique fire when necessary.
+Our horses have suffered heavily too.  Bonfire had a light wound
+from a piece of shell; it is healing and the dear old fellow is very fit.
+Had my first ride for seventeen days last night.  We never saw horses
+but with the wagons bringing up the ammunition.  When fire was hottest
+they had to come two miles on a road terribly swept,
+and they did it magnificently.  But how tired we are!
+Weary in body and wearier in mind.  None of our men went off their heads
+but men in units nearby did -- and no wonder.
+
+
+                                        France, May 12th, 1915.
+
+I am glad you had your mind at rest by the rumour that we were in reserve.
+What newspaper work!  The poor old artillery never gets any mention,
+and the whole show is the infantry.  It may interest you to note on your map
+a spot on the west bank of the canal, a mile and a half north of Ypres,
+as the scene of our labours.  There can be no harm in saying so,
+now that we are out of it.  The unit was the most advanced
+of all the Allies' guns by a good deal except one French battery
+which stayed in a position yet more advanced for two days,
+and then had to be taken out.  I think it may be said that we saw the show
+from the soup to the coffee.
+
+
+                                        France, May 17th, 1915.
+
+The farther we get away from Ypres the more we learn of the enormous power
+the Germans put in to push us over.  Lord only knows how many men they had,
+and how many they lost.  I wish I could embody on paper
+some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days.  All the gunners
+down this way passed us all sorts of `kudos' over it.  Our guns --
+those behind us, from which we had to dodge occasional prematures --
+have a peculiar bang-sound added to the sharp crack of discharge.
+The French 75 has a sharp wood-block-chop sound, and the shell goes over
+with a peculiar whine -- not unlike a cat, but beginning with n --
+thus, -- n-eouw.  The big fellows, 3000 yards or more behind,
+sounded exactly like our own, but the flash came three or four seconds
+before the sound.  Of the German shells -- the field guns come
+with a great velocity -- no warning -- just whizz-bang; white smoke,
+nearly always air bursts.  The next size, probably 5 inch howitzers,
+have a perceptible time of approach, an increasing whine,
+and a great burst on the percussion -- dirt in all directions.
+And even if a shell hit on the front of the canal bank,
+and one were on the back of the bank, five, eight, or ten seconds later
+one would hear a belated WHIRR, and curved pieces of shell would light --
+probably parabolic curves or boomerangs.  These shells have a great back kick;
+from the field gun shrapnel we got nothing BEHIND the shell --
+all the pieces go forward.  From the howitzers, the danger is almost as great
+behind as in front if they burst on percussion.  Then the large shrapnel
+-- air-burst -- have a double explosion, as if a giant shook a wet sail
+for two flaps; first a dark green burst of smoke; then a lighter yellow burst
+goes out from the centre, forwards.  I do not understand the why of it.
+
+Then the 10-inch shells:  a deliberate whirring course --
+a deafening explosion -- black smoke, and earth 70 or 80 feet in the air.
+These always burst on percussion.  The constant noise of our own guns
+is really worse on the nerves than the shell; there is the deafening noise,
+and the constant whirr of shells going overhead.  The earth shakes
+with every nearby gun and every close shell.  I think I may safely enclose
+a cross section of our position.  The left is the front:  a slope down
+of 20 feet in 100 yards to the canal, a high row of trees on each bank,
+then a short 40 yards slope up to the summit of the trench,
+where the brain of the outfit was; then a telephone wired slope,
+and on the sharp slope, the dugouts, including my own.
+The nondescript affair on the low slope is the gun position,
+behind it the men's shelter pits.  Behind my dugout was a rapid small stream,
+on its far bank a row of pollard willows, then 30 yards of field,
+then a road with two parallel rows of high trees.  Behind this again,
+several hundred yards of fields to cross before the main gun positions
+are reached.
+
+More often fire came from three quarters left, and because our ridge died away
+there was a low spot over which they could come pretty dangerously.
+The road thirty yards behind us was a nightmare to me.
+I saw all the tragedies of war enacted there.  A wagon, or a bunch of horses,
+or a stray man, or a couple of men, would get there just in time for a shell.
+One would see the absolute knock-out, and the obviously lightly wounded
+crawling off on hands and knees; or worse yet, at night,
+one would hear the tragedy -- "that horse scream" -- or the man's moan.
+All our own wagons had to come there (one every half hour in smart action),
+be emptied, and the ammunition carried over by hand.  Do you wonder
+that the road got on our nerves?  On this road, too, was the house
+where we took our meals.  It was hit several times, windows all blown in
+by nearby shells, but one end remained for us.
+
+Seventeen days of Hades!  At the end of the first day if anyone had told us
+we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands
+and said it could not be done.  On the fifteenth day we got orders to go out,
+but that was countermanded in two hours.  To the last we could scarcely
+believe we were actually to get out.  The real audacity of the position
+was its safety; the Germans knew to a foot where we were.
+I think I told you of some of the "you must stick it out" messages we got
+from our [French] General, -- they put it up to us.  It is a wonder to me
+that we slept when, and how, we did.  If we had not slept and eaten
+as well as possible we could not have lasted.  And while we were doing this,
+the London office of a Canadian newspaper cabled home "Canadian Artillery
+in reserve."  Such is fame!
+
+
+                                        Thursday, May 27th, 1915.
+
+Day cloudy and chilly.  We wore our greatcoats most of the afternoon,
+and looked for bits of sunlight to get warm.  About two o'clock
+the heavy guns gave us a regular "black-smithing".  Every time we fired
+we drew a perfect hornet's nest about our heads.  While attending to
+a casualty, a shell broke through both sides of the trench, front and back,
+about twelve feet away.  The zigzag of the trench was between it and us,
+and we escaped.  From my bunk the moon looks down at me,
+and the wind whistles along the trench like a corridor.  As the trenches
+run in all directions they catch the wind however it blows,
+so one is always sure of a good draught.  We have not had our clothes off
+since last Saturday, and there is no near prospect of getting them off.
+
+
+                                        Friday, May 28th, 1915.
+
+Warmer this morning and sunny, a quiet morning, as far as we were concerned.
+One battery fired twenty rounds and the rest "sat tight".
+Newspapers which arrive show that up to May 7th, the Canadian public
+has made no guess at the extent of the battle of Ypres.  The Canadian papers
+seem to have lost interest in it after the first four days;
+this regardless of the fact that the artillery, numerically a quarter
+of the division, was in all the time.  One correspondent writes
+from the Canadian rest camp, and never mentions Ypres.  Others say
+they hear heavy bombarding which appears to come from Armentieres.
+==
+
+
+A few strokes will complete the picture:
+
+
+==
+                                        Wednesday, April 29th*, 1915.
+
+This morning is the sixth day of this fight; it has been constant,
+except that we got good chance to sleep for the last two nights.
+Our men have fought beyond praise.  Canadian soldiers have set
+a standard for themselves which will keep posterity busy to surpass.
+And the War Office published that the 4.1 guns captured were Canadian.
+They were not:  the division has not lost a gun so far by capture.
+We will make a good job of it -- if we can.
+
+--
+* [sic]  This should read April 28th.  -- A. L., 1995.
+--
+
+
+                                        May 1st, 1915.
+
+This is the ninth day that we have stuck to the ridge,
+and the batteries have fought with a steadiness which is beyond all praise.
+If I could say what our casualties in men, guns, and horses were,
+you would see at a glance it has been a hot corner; but we have given
+better than we got, for the German casualties from this front
+have been largely from artillery, except for the French attack of yesterday
+and the day before, when they advanced appreciably on our left.
+The front, however, just here remains where it was,
+and the artillery fire is very heavy -- I think as heavy here
+as on any part of the line, with the exception of certain cross-roads
+which are the particular object of fire.  The first four days
+the anxiety was wearing, for we did not know at what minute
+the German army corps would come for us.  We lie out in support
+of the French troops entirely, and are working with them.
+Since that time evidently great reinforcements have come in,
+and now we have a most formidable force of artillery to turn on them.
+
+Fortunately the weather has been good; the days are hot and summerlike.
+Yesterday in the press of bad smells I got a whiff of a hedgerow in bloom.
+The birds perch on the trees over our heads and twitter away
+as if there was nothing to worry about.  Bonfire is still well.
+I do hope he gets through all right.
+
+
+                                        Flanders, March 30th, 1915.
+
+The Brigade is actually in twelve different places.  The ammunition column
+and the horse and wagon lines are back, and my corporal visits them every day.
+I attend the gun lines; any casualty is reported by telephone, and I go to it.
+The wounded and sick stay where they are till dark, when the field ambulances
+go over certain grounds and collect.  A good deal of suffering is entailed
+by the delay till night, but it is useless for vehicles to go on the roads
+within 1500 yards of the trenches.  They are willing enough to go.
+Most of the trench injuries are of the head, and therefore there is
+a high proportion of killed in the daily warfare as opposed to an attack.
+Our Canadian plots fill up rapidly.
+==
+
+
+And here is one last note to his mother:
+
+
+==
+On the eve of the battle of Ypres I was indebted to you for a letter
+which said "take good care of my son Jack, but I would not
+have you unmindful that, sometimes, when we save we lose."
+I have that last happy phrase to thank.  Often when I had to go out
+over the areas that were being shelled, it came into my mind.
+I would shoulder the box, and "go to it".
+==
+
+
+At this time the Canadian division was moving south to take its share
+in the events that happened in the La Bassee sector.  Here is the record:
+
+
+==
+                                        Tuesday, June 1st, 1915.
+          1-1/2 miles northeast of Festubert, near La Bassee.
+
+Last night a 15 pr. and a 4-inch howitzer fired at intervals of five minutes
+from 8 till 4; most of them within 500 or 600 yards --
+a very tiresome procedure; much of it is on registered roads.
+In the morning I walked out to Le Touret to the wagon lines, got Bonfire,
+and rode to the headquarters at Vendin-lez-Bethune, a little village
+a mile past Bethune.  Left the horse at the lines and walked back again.
+An unfortunate shell in the 1st killed a sergeant and wounded two men;
+thanks to the strong emplacements the rest of the crew escaped.
+In the evening went around the batteries and said good-bye.  We stood by
+while they laid away the sergeant who was killed.  Kind hands have made
+two pathetic little wreaths of roses; the grave under an apple-tree,
+and the moon rising over the horizon; a siege-lamp held for the book.
+Of the last 41 days the guns have been in action 33.  Captain Lockhart,
+late with Fort Garry Horse, arrived to relieve me.  I handed over,
+came up to the horse lines, and slept in a covered wagon in a courtyard.
+We were all sorry to part -- the four of us have been very intimate
+and had agreed perfectly -- and friendships under these circumstances
+are apt to be the real thing.  I am sorry to leave them in such a hot corner,
+but cannot choose and must obey orders.  It is a great relief from strain,
+I must admit, to be out, but I could wish that they all were.
+==
+
+
+This phase of the war lasted two months precisely, and to John McCrae
+it must have seemed a lifetime since he went into this memorable action.
+The events preceding the second battle of Ypres received scant mention
+in his letters; but one remains, which brings into relief
+one of the many moves of that tumultuous time.
+
+
+==
+                                        April 1st, 1915.
+
+We moved out in the late afternoon, getting on the road a little after dark.
+Such a move is not unattended by danger, for to bring horses and limbers
+down the roads in the shell zone in daylight renders them liable
+to observation, aerial or otherwise.  More than that, the roads are now
+beginning to be dusty, and at all times there is the noise which carries far.
+The roads are nearly all registered in their battery books,
+so if they suspect a move, it is the natural thing to loose off a few rounds.
+However, our anxiety was not borne out, and we got out of the danger zone
+by 8.30 -- a not too long march in the dark, and then for
+the last of the march a glorious full moon.  The houses everywhere
+are as dark as possible, and on the roads noises but no lights.
+One goes on by the long rows of trees that are so numerous in this country,
+on cobblestones and country roads, watching one's horses' ears wagging,
+and seeing not much else.  Our maps are well studied before we start,
+and this time we are not far out of familiar territory.
+We got to our new billet about 10 -- quite a good farmhouse;
+and almost at once one feels the relief of the strain of being
+in the shell zone.  I cannot say I had noticed it when there;
+but one is distinctly relieved when out of it.
+==
+
+
+Such, then, was the life in Flanders fields in which the verse was born.
+This is no mere surmise.  There is a letter from Major-General
+E. W. B. Morrison, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who commanded the Brigade
+at the time, which is quite explicit.  "This poem," General Morrison writes,
+"was literally born of fire and blood during the hottest phase
+of the second battle of Ypres.  My headquarters were in a trench
+on the top of the bank of the Ypres Canal, and John had his dressing station
+in a hole dug in the foot of the bank.  During periods in the battle
+men who were shot actually rolled down the bank into his dressing station.
+Along from us a few hundred yards was the headquarters of a regiment,
+and many times during the sixteen days of battle, he and I watched them
+burying their dead whenever there was a lull.  Thus the crosses, row on row,
+grew into a good-sized cemetery.  Just as he describes, we often heard
+in the mornings the larks singing high in the air, between the crash
+of the shell and the reports of the guns in the battery just beside us.
+I have a letter from him in which he mentions having written the poem
+to pass away the time between the arrival of batches of wounded,
+and partly as an experiment with several varieties of poetic metre.  I have
+a sketch of the scene, taken at the time, including his dressing station;
+and during our operations at Passchendaele last November,
+I found time to make a sketch of the scene of the crosses, row on row,
+from which he derived his inspiration."
+
+The last letter from the Front is dated June 1st, 1915.  Upon that day
+he was posted to No. 3 General Hospital at Boulogne, and placed in charge
+of medicine with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel as of date 17th April, 1915.
+Here he remained until the day of his death on January 28th, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+  III
+
+The Brand of War
+
+
+
+There are men who pass through such scenes unmoved.  If they have eyes,
+they do not see; and ears, they do not hear.  But John McCrae
+was profoundly moved, and bore in his body until the end
+the signs of his experience.  Before taking up his new duties
+he made a visit to the hospitals in Paris to see if there was any new thing
+that might be learned.  A Nursing Sister in the American Ambulance
+at Neuilly-sur-Seine met him in the wards.  Although she had known him
+for fifteen years she did not recognize him, -- he appeared to her so old,
+so worn, his face lined and ashen grey in colour, his expression dull,
+his action slow and heavy.
+
+To those who have never seen John McCrae since he left Canada
+this change in his appearance will seem incredible.  He was of the Eckfords,
+and the Eckford men were "bonnie men", men with rosy cheeks.  It was a year
+before I met him again, and he had not yet recovered from the strain.
+Although he was upwards of forty years of age when he left Canada
+he had always retained an appearance of extreme youthfulness.
+He frequented the company of men much younger than himself,
+and their youth was imputed to him.  His frame was tall and well knit,
+and he showed alertness in every move.  He would arise from the chair
+with every muscle in action, and walk forth as if he were about to dance.
+
+The first time I saw him he was doing an autopsy at
+the Montreal General Hospital upon the body of a child
+who had died under my care.  This must have been in the year 1900,
+and the impression of boyishness remained until I met him in France
+sixteen years later.  His manner of dress did much to produce
+this illusion.  When he was a student in London he employed a tailor
+in Queen Victoria Street to make his clothes; but with advancing years
+he neglected to have new measurements taken or to alter the pattern
+of his cloth.  To obtain a new suit was merely to write a letter,
+and he was always economical of time.  In those days jackets were cut short,
+and he adhered to the fashion with persistent care.
+
+This appearance of youth at times caused chagrin to those patients
+who had heard of his fame as a physician, and called upon him
+for the first time.  In the Royal Victoria Hospital,
+after he had been appointed physician, he entered the wards
+and asked a nurse to fetch a screen so that he might examine a patient
+in privacy.
+
+"Students are not allowed to use screens," the young woman warned him
+with some asperity in her voice.
+
+If I were asked to state briefly the impression which remains with me
+most firmly, I should say it was one of continuous laughter.
+That is not true, of course, for in repose his face was heavy,
+his countenance more than ruddy; it was even of a "choleric" cast,
+and at times almost livid, especially when he was recovering
+from one of those attacks of asthma from which he habitually suffered.
+But his smile was his own, and it was ineffable.  It filled the eyes,
+and illumined the face.  It was the smile of sheer fun, of pure gaiety,
+of sincere playfulness, innocent of irony; with a tinge of sarcasm -- never.
+When he allowed himself to speak of meanness in the profession,
+of dishonesty in men, of evil in the world, his face became formidable.
+The glow of his countenance deepened; his words were bitter,
+and the tones harsh.  But the indignation would not last.  The smile would
+come back.  The effect was spoiled.  Everyone laughed with him.
+
+After his experience at the front the old gaiety never returned.
+There were moments of irascibility and moods of irritation.
+The desire for solitude grew upon him, and with Bonfire and Bonneau
+he would go apart for long afternoons far afield by the roads and lanes
+about Boulogne.  The truth is:  he felt that he and all had failed,
+and that the torch was thrown from failing hands.  We have heard much
+of the suffering, the misery, the cold, the wet, the gloom of those
+first three winters; but no tongue has yet uttered the inner misery of heart
+that was bred of those three years of failure to break the enemy's force.
+
+He was not alone in this shadow of deep darkness.  Givenchy, Festubert,
+Neuve-Chapelle, Ypres, Hooge, the Somme -- to mention alone the battles
+in which up to that time the Canadian Corps had been engaged --
+all ended in failure; and to a sensitive and foreboding mind
+there were sounds and signs that it would be given to this generation to hear
+the pillars and fabric of Empire come crashing into the abysm of chaos.
+He was not at the Somme in that October of 1916, but those who returned
+up north with the remnants of their division from that place of slaughter
+will remember that, having done all men could do, they felt like deserters
+because they had not left their poor bodies dead upon the field
+along with friends of a lifetime, comrades of a campaign.
+This is no mere matter of surmise.  The last day I spent with him
+we talked of those things in his tent, and I testify that it is true.
+
+
+
+
+  IV
+
+Going to the Wars
+
+
+
+John McCrae went to the war without illusions.  At first,
+like many others of his age, he did not "think of enlisting",
+although "his services are at the disposal of the Country
+if it needs them."
+
+In July, 1914, he was at work upon the second edition of
+the `Text-Book of Pathology' by Adami and McCrae, published by Messrs.
+Lea and Febiger, and he had gone to Philadelphia to read the proofs.
+He took them to Atlantic City where he could "sit out on the sand,
+and get sunshine and oxygen, and work all at once."
+
+It was a laborious task, passing eighty to a hundred pages
+of highly technical print each day.  Then there was the index,
+between six and seven thousand items.  "I have," so he writes,
+"to change every item in the old index and add others.
+I have a pile of pages, 826 in all.  I look at the index,
+find the old page among the 826, and then change the number.
+This about 7000 times, so you may guess the drudgery."  On July 15th,
+the work was finished, registered, and entrusted to the mail
+with a special delivery stamp.  The next day he wrote the preface,
+"which really finished the job."  In very truth his scientific work was done.
+
+It was now midsummer.  The weather was hot.  He returned to Montreal.
+Practice was dull.  He was considering a voyage to Havre and "a little trip
+with Dr. Adami" when he arrived.  On July 29th, he left Canada
+"for better or worse.  With the world so disturbed," he records,
+"I would gladly have stayed more in touch with events, but I dare say
+one is just as happy away from the hundred conflicting reports."  The ship
+was the `Scotian' of the Allan Line, and he "shared a comfortable cabin
+with a professor of Greek," who was at the University in his own time.
+
+For one inland born, he had a keen curiosity about ships and the sea.
+There is a letter written when he was thirteen years of age
+in which he gives an account of a visit to a naval exhibition in London.
+He describes the models which he saw, and gives an elaborate table of names,
+dimensions, and tonnage.  He could identify the house flags and funnels
+of all the principal liners; he could follow a ship through
+all her vicissitudes and change of ownership.  When he found himself
+in a seaport town his first business was to visit the water front
+and take knowledge of the vessels that lay in the stream or by the docks.
+One voyage he made to England was in a cargo ship.  With his passion for work
+he took on the duties of surgeon, and amazed the skipper with a revelation
+of the new technique in operations which he himself had been accustomed
+to perform by the light of experience alone.
+
+On the present and more luxurious voyage, he remarks that the decks
+were roomy, the ship seven years old, and capable of fifteen knots an hour,
+the passengers pleasant, and including a large number of French.
+All now know only too well the nature of the business which sent
+those ardent spirits flocking home to their native land.
+
+Forty-eight hours were lost in fog.  The weather was too thick
+for making the Straits, and the `Scotian' proceeded by Cape Race
+on her way to Havre.  Under date of August 5-6 the first reference
+to the war appears:  "All is excitement; the ship runs without lights.
+Surely the German kaiser has his head in the noose at last:
+it will be a terrible war, and the finish of one or the other.
+I am afraid my holiday trip is knocked galley west; but we shall see."
+The voyage continues.  A "hundred miles from Moville we turned back,
+and headed South for Queenstown; thence to the Channel; put in at Portland;
+a squadron of battleships; arrived here this morning."
+
+The problem presented itself to him as to many another.
+The decision was made.  To go back to America was to go back from the war.
+Here are the words:  "It seems quite impossible to return,
+and I do not think I should try.  I would not feel quite comfortable over it.
+I am cabling to Morrison at Ottawa, that I am available either as combatant
+or medical if they need me.  I do not go to it very light-heartedly,
+but I think it is up to me."
+
+It was not so easy in those days to get to the war, as he and many others
+were soon to discover.  There was in Canada at the time
+a small permanent force of 3000 men, a military college, a Headquarters staff,
+and divisional staff for the various districts into which the country
+was divided.  In addition there was a body of militia with a strength
+of about 60,000 officers and other ranks.  Annual camps were formed
+at which all arms of the service were represented, and the whole
+was a very good imitation of service conditions.  Complete plans
+for mobilization were in existence, by which a certain quota,
+according to the establishment required, could be detailed from each district.
+But upon the outbreak of war the operations were taken in hand
+by a Minister of Militia who assumed in his own person all those duties
+usually assigned to the staff.  He called to his assistance
+certain business and political associates, with the result that volunteers
+who followed military methods did not get very far.
+
+Accordingly we find it written in John McCrae's diary from London:
+"Nothing doing here.  I have yet no word from the Department at Ottawa,
+but I try to be philosophical until I hear from Morrison.
+If they want me for the Canadian forces, I could use my old Sam Browne belt,
+sword, and saddle if it is yet extant.  At times I wish I could go home
+with a clear conscience."
+
+He sailed for Canada in the `Calgarian' on August 28th,
+having received a cablegram from Colonel Morrison, that he had been
+provisionally appointed surgeon to the 1st Brigade Artillery.
+The night he arrived in Montreal I dined with him at the University Club,
+and he was aglow with enthusiasm over this new adventure.
+He remained in Montreal for a few days, and on September 9th,
+joined the unit to which he was attached as medical officer.
+Before leaving Montreal he wrote to his sister Geills:
+
+"Out on the awful old trail again!  And with very mixed feelings,
+but some determination.  I am off to Val-cartier to-night.  I was really
+afraid to go home, for I feared it would only be harrowing for Mater,
+and I think she agrees.  We can hope for happier times.
+Everyone most kind and helpful:  my going does not seem to surprise anyone.
+I know you will understand it is hard to go home, and perhaps easier
+for us all that I do not.  I am in good hope of coming back soon and safely:
+that, I am glad to say, is in other and better hands than ours."
+
+
+
+
+  V
+
+South Africa
+
+
+
+In the Autumn of 1914, after John McCrae had gone over-seas,
+I was in a warehouse in Montreal, in which one might find
+an old piece of mahogany wood.  His boxes were there in storage,
+with his name plainly printed upon them.  The storeman, observing my interest,
+remarked:  "This Doctor McCrae cannot be doing much business;
+he is always going to the wars."  The remark was profoundly significant
+of the state of mind upon the subject of war which prevailed at the time
+in Canada in more intelligent persons.  To this storeman war merely meant
+that the less usefully employed members of the community
+sent their boxes to him for safe-keeping until their return.
+War was a great holiday from work; and he had a vague remembrance
+that some fifteen years before this customer had required of him
+a similar service when the South African war broke out.
+
+Either `in esse' or `in posse' John McCrae had "always been going
+to the wars."  At fourteen years of age he joined the Guelph Highland Cadets,
+and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant.  As his size and strength increased
+he reverted to the ranks and transferred to the Artillery.  In due time
+he rose from gunner to major.  The formal date of his "Gazette" is 17-3-02
+as they write it in the army; but he earned his rank in South Africa.
+
+War was the burden of his thought; war and death the theme of his verse.
+At the age of thirteen we find him at a gallery in Nottingham,
+writing this note:  "I saw the picture of the artillery going over
+the trenches at Tel-el-Kebir.  It is a good picture; but there are four teams
+on the guns.  Perhaps an extra one had to be put on."  If his nomenclature
+was not correct, the observation of the young artillerist was exact.
+Such excesses were not permitted in his father's battery in Guelph, Ontario.
+During this same visit his curiosity led him into the House of Lords,
+and the sum of his written observation is, "When someone is speaking
+no one seems to listen at all."
+
+His mother I never knew.  Canada is a large place.  With his father I had
+four hours' talk from seven to eleven one June evening in London in 1917.
+At the time I was on leave from France to give the Cavendish Lecture,
+a task which demanded some thought; and after two years in the army
+it was a curious sensation -- watching one's mind at work again.
+The day was Sunday.  I had walked down to the river to watch the flowing tide.
+To one brought up in a country of streams and a moving sea
+the curse of Flanders is her stagnant waters.  It is little wonder
+the exiles from the Judaean hillsides wept beside the slimy River.
+
+The Thames by evening in June, memories that reached from Tacitus
+to Wordsworth, the embrasure that extends in front of the Egyptian obelisk
+for a standing place, and some children "swimming a dog"; --
+that was the scene and circumstance of my first meeting with his father.
+A man of middle age was standing by.  He wore the flashings
+of a Lieutenant-Colonel and for badges the Artillery grenades.
+He seemed a friendly man; and under the influence of the moment,
+which he also surely felt, I spoke to him.
+
+"A fine river," --  That was a safe remark.
+
+"But I know a finer."
+
+"Pharpar and Abana?"  I put the stranger to the test.
+
+"No," he said.  "The St. Lawrence is not of Damascus."  He had answered
+to the sign, and looked at my patches.
+
+"I have a son in France, myself," he said.  "His name is McCrae."
+
+"Not John McCrae?"
+
+"John McCrae is my son."
+
+The resemblance was instant, but this was an older man
+than at first sight he seemed to be.  I asked him to dinner at Morley's,
+my place of resort for a length of time beyond the memory
+of all but the oldest servants.  He had already dined
+but he came and sat with me, and told me marvellous things.
+
+David McCrae had raised, and trained, a field battery in Guelph,
+and brought it overseas.  He was at the time upwards of seventy years of age,
+and was considered on account of years alone "unfit" to proceed to the front.
+For many years he had commanded a field battery in the Canadian militia,
+went on manoeuvres with his "cannons", and fired round shot.
+When the time came for using shells he bored the fuse with a gimlet;
+and if the gimlet were lost in the grass, the gun was out of action
+until the useful tool could be found.  This "cannon ball"
+would travel over the country according to the obstacles it encountered and,
+"if it struck a man, it might break his leg."
+
+In such a martial atmosphere the boy was brought up,
+and he was early nourished with the history of the Highland regiments.
+Also from his father he inherited, or had instilled into him,
+a love of the out of doors, a knowledge of trees, and plants,
+a sympathy with birds and beasts, domestic and wild.
+When the South African war broke out a contingent was dispatched from Canada,
+but it was so small that few of those desiring to go could find a place.
+This explains the genesis of the following letter:
+
+
+==
+I see by to-night's bulletin that there is to be no second contingent.
+I feel sick with disappointment, and do not believe that I have ever been
+so disappointed in my life, for ever since this business began
+I am certain there have not been fifteen minutes of my waking hours
+that it has not been in my mind.  It has to come sooner or later.
+One campaign might cure me, but nothing else ever will,
+unless it should be old age.  I regret bitterly that I did not enlist
+with the first, for I doubt if ever another chance will offer like it.
+This is not said in ignorance of what the hardships would be.
+
+I am ashamed to say I am doing my work in a merely mechanical way.
+If they are taking surgeons on the other side, I have enough money
+to get myself across.  If I knew any one over there who could do anything,
+I would certainly set about it.  If I can get an appointment in England
+by going, I will go.  My position here I do not count as an old boot
+in comparison.
+==
+
+
+In the end he accomplished the desire of his heart, and sailed
+on the `Laurentian'.  Concerning the voyage one transcription will be enough:
+
+
+==
+On orderly duty.  I have just been out taking the picket at 11.30 P.M.
+In the stables the long row of heads in the half-darkness,
+the creaking of the ship, the shivering of the hull from the vibration
+of the engines, the sing of a sentry on the spar deck to some passer-by.
+Then to the forward deck:  the sky half covered with scudding clouds,
+the stars bright in the intervals, the wind whistling a regular blow
+that tries one's ears, the constant swish as she settles down to a sea;
+and, looking aft, the funnel with a wreath of smoke trailing away
+off into the darkness on the starboard quarter; the patch of white
+on the funnel discernible dimly; the masts drawing maps across the sky
+as one looks up; the clank of shovels coming up through the ventilators, --
+if you have ever been there, you know it all.
+
+There was a voluntary service at six; two ships' lanterns
+and the men all around, the background of sky and sea,
+and the strains of "Nearer my God to Thee" rising up in splendid chorus.
+It was a very effective scene, and it occurred to me that THIS
+was "the rooibaatjees singing on the road," as the song says.
+==
+
+
+The next entry is from South Africa:
+
+
+==
+                                   Green Point Camp, Capetown,
+                                        February 25th, 1900.
+
+You have no idea of the WORK.  Section commanders live with their sections,
+which is the right way.  It makes long hours.  I never knew a softer bed
+than the ground is these nights.  I really enjoy every minute
+though there is anxiety.  We have lost all our spare horses.
+We have only enough to turn out the battery and no more.
+==
+
+
+After a description of a number of the regiments camped near by them,
+he speaks of the Indian troops, and then says:
+
+
+==
+We met the High Priest of it all, and I had a five minutes' chat with him --
+Kipling I mean.  He visited the camp.  He looks like his pictures,
+and is very affable.  He told me I spoke like a Winnipeger.
+He said we ought to "fine the men for drinking unboiled water.
+Don't give them C.B.; it is no good.  Fine them, or drive common sense
+into them.  All Canadians have common sense."
+==
+
+
+The next letter is from the Lines of Communication:
+
+
+==
+                                        Van Wyks Vlei,
+                                        March 22nd, 1900.
+
+Here I am with my first command.  Each place we strike
+is a little more God-forsaken than the last, and this place wins up to date.
+We marched last week from Victoria west to Carnovan, about 80 miles.
+We stayed there over Sunday, and on Monday my section was detached
+with mounted infantry, I being the only artillery officer.
+We marched 54 miles in 37 hours with stops; not very fast,
+but quite satisfactory.  My horse is doing well, although very thin.
+Night before last on the road we halted, and I dismounted for a minute.
+When we started I pulled on the lines but no answer.  The poor old chap
+was fast asleep in his tracks, and in about thirty seconds too.
+
+This continuous marching is really hard work.  The men at every halt
+just drop down in the road and sleep until they are kicked up again
+in ten minutes.  They do it willingly too.  I am commanding officer,
+adjutant, officer on duty, and all the rest since we left the main body.
+Talk about the Army in Flanders!  You should hear this battalion.
+I always knew soldiers could swear, but you ought to hear these fellows.
+I am told the first contingent has got a name among the regulars.
+==
+
+
+Three weeks later he writes:
+
+
+==
+                                        April 10th, 1900.
+
+We certainly shall have done a good march when we get to the railroad,
+478 miles through a country desolate of forage carrying our own transport
+and one-half rations of forage, and frequently the men's rations.
+For two days running we had nine hours in the saddle without food.
+My throat was sore and swollen for a day or two, and I felt
+so sorry for myself at times that I laughed to think how I must have looked:
+sitting on a stone, drinking a pan of tea without trimmings,
+that had got cold, and eating a shapeless lump of brown bread;
+my one "hank" drawn around my neck, serving as hank and bandage alternately.
+It is miserable to have to climb up on one's horse with a head
+like a buzz saw, the sun very hot, and "gargle" in one's water bottle.
+It is surprising how I can go without water if I have to on a short stretch,
+that is, of ten hours in the sun.  It is after nightfall that the thirst
+really seems to attack one and actually gnaws.  One thinks of all
+the cool drinks and good things one would like to eat.  Please understand
+that this is not for one instant in any spirit of growling.
+==
+
+
+The detail was now established at Victoria Road.  Three entries appear*:
+
+--
+* I only count two. . . .  A. L., 1995.
+--
+
+
+==
+                                        April 23rd, 1900.
+
+We are still here in camp hoping for orders to move, but they have
+not yet come.  Most of the other troops have gone.  A squadron of the M.C.R.,
+my messmates for the past five weeks, have gone and I am left an orphan.
+I was very sorry to see them go.  They, in the kindness of their hearts,
+say, if I get stranded, they will do the best they can to get a troop for me
+in the squadron or some such employment.  Impracticable, but kind.
+I have no wish to cease to be a gunner.
+
+
+                                        Victoria Road, May 20th, 1900.
+
+The horses are doing as well as one can expect, for the rations
+are insufficient.  Our men have been helping to get ready a rest camp near us,
+and have been filling mattresses with hay.  Every fatigue party comes back
+from the hospital, their jackets bulging with hay for the horses.
+Two bales were condemned as too musty to put into the mattresses,
+and we were allowed to take them for the horses.  They didn't leave
+a spear of it.  Isn't it pitiful?  Everything that the heart of man and woman
+can devise has been sent out for the "Tommies", but no one thinks
+of the poor horses.  They get the worst of it all the time.  Even now
+we blush to see the handful of hay that each horse gets at a feed.
+==
+
+
+The Boer War is so far off in time and space that a few further
+detached references must suffice:
+
+
+==
+When riding into Bloemfontein met Lord ----'s funeral at the cemetery gates,
+-- band, firing party, Union Jack, and about three companies.
+A few yards farther on a "Tommy" covered only by his blanket,
+escorted by thirteen men all told, the last class distinction
+that the world can ever make.
+
+
+We had our baptism of fire yesterday.  They opened on us from the left flank.
+Their first shell was about 150 yards in front -- direction good.
+The next was 100 yards over; and we thought we were bracketed.
+Some shrapnel burst over us and scattered on all sides.
+I felt as if a hail storm was coming down, and wanted to turn my back,
+but it was over in an instant.  The whistle of a shell is unpleasant.
+You hear it begin to scream; the scream grows louder and louder;
+it seems to be coming exactly your way; then you realize
+that it has gone over.  Most of them fell between our guns and wagons.
+Our position was quite in the open.
+==
+
+
+With Ian Hamilton's column near Balmoral.
+
+
+==
+The day was cold, much like a December day at home, and by my kit going astray
+I had only light clothing.  The rain was fearfully chilly.
+When we got in about dark we found that the transport could not come up,
+and it had all our blankets and coats.  I had my cape and a rubber sheet
+for the saddle, both soaking wet.  Being on duty I held to camp,
+the others making for the house nearby where they got poor quarters.
+I bunked out, supperless like every one else, under an ammunition wagon.
+It rained most of the night and was bitterly cold.  I slept at intervals,
+keeping the same position all night, both legs in a puddle and my feet
+being rained on:  it was a long night from dark at 5.30 to morning.
+Ten men in the infantry regiment next us died during the night from exposure.
+Altogether I never knew such a night, and with decent luck hope never to see
+such another.
+
+
+As we passed we saw the Connaughts looking at the graves of their comrades
+of twenty years ago.  The Battery rode at attention and gave "Eyes right":
+the first time for twenty years that the roll of a British gun has broken in
+on the silence of those unnamed graves.
+
+We were inspected by Lord Roberts.  The battery turned out very smart,
+and Lord Roberts complimented the Major on its appearance.
+He then inspected, and afterwards asked to have the officers called out.
+We were presented to him in turn; he spoke a few words to each of us,
+asking what our corps and service had been.  He seemed surprised
+that we were all Field Artillery men, but probably the composition
+of the other Canadian units had to do with this.  He asked
+a good many questions about the horses, the men, and particularly about
+the spirits of the men.  Altogether he showed a very kind interest
+in the battery.
+
+
+At nine took the Presbyterian parade to the lines, the first
+Presbyterian service since we left Canada.  We had the right,
+the Gordons and the Royal Scots next.  The music was excellent,
+led by the brass band of the Royal Scots, which played extremely well.
+All the singing was from the psalms and paraphrases:  "Old Hundred"
+and "Duke Street" among them.  It was very pleasant to hear the old reliables
+once more.  "McCrae's Covenanters" some of the officers called us;
+but I should not like to set our conduct up against the standard
+of those austere men.
+==
+
+
+At Lyndenburg:
+
+
+==
+The Boers opened on us at about 10,000 yards, the fire being accurate
+from the first.  They shelled us till dark, over three hours.
+The guns on our left fired for a long time on Buller's camp,
+the ones on our right on us.  We could see the smoke and flash;
+then there was a soul-consuming interval of 20 to 30 seconds
+when we would hear the report, and about five seconds later the burst.
+Many in succession burst over and all around us.  I picked up pieces
+which fell within a few feet.  It was a trying afternoon,
+and we stood around wondering.  We moved the horses back,
+and took cover under the wagons.  We were thankful when the sun went down,
+especially as for the last hour of daylight they turned all their guns on us.
+The casualties were few.
+
+The next morning a heavy mist prevented the enemy from firing.
+The division marched out at 7.30 A.M.  The attack was made in three columns:
+cavalry brigade on the left; Buller's troops in the centre, Hamilton's on
+the right.  The Canadian artillery were with Hamilton's division.
+The approach to the hill was exposed everywhere except where some cover
+was afforded by ridges.  We marched out as support to the Gordons,
+the cavalry and the Royal Horse Artillery going out to our right
+as a flank guard.  While we were waiting three 100-pound shells
+struck the top of the ridge in succession about 50 to 75 yards in front
+of the battery line.  We began to feel rather shaky.
+
+On looking over the field at this time one could not tell
+that anything was occurring except for the long range guns replying
+to the fire from the hill.  The enemy had opened fire as soon as our advance
+was pushed out.  With a glass one could distinguish the infantry pushing up
+in lines, five or six in succession, the men being some yards apart.
+Then came a long pause, broken only by the big guns.  At last we got the order
+to advance just as the big guns of the enemy stopped their fire.
+We advanced about four miles mostly up the slope, which is in all
+about 1500 feet high, over a great deal of rough ground
+and over a number of spruits.  The horses were put to their utmost
+to draw the guns up the hills.  As we advanced we could see artillery
+crawling in from both flanks, all converging to the main hill, while far away
+the infantry and cavalry were beginning to crown the heights near us.
+Then the field guns and the pompoms began to play.  As the field guns
+came up to a broad plateau section after section came into action,
+and we fired shrapnel and lyddite on the crests ahead and to the left.
+Every now and then a rattle of Mausers and Metfords would tell us
+that the infantry were at their work, but practically the battle was over.
+From being an infantry attack as expected it was the gunners' day,
+and the artillery seemed to do excellent work.
+
+General Buller pushed up the hill as the guns were at work,
+and afterwards General Hamilton; the one as grim as his pictures,
+the other looking very happy.  The wind blew through us cold like ice
+as we stood on the hill; as the artillery ceased fire the mist dropped over us
+chilling us to the bone.  We were afraid we should have to spend the night
+on the hill, but a welcome order came sending us back to camp,
+a distance of five miles by the roads, as Buller would hold the hill,
+and our force must march south.  Our front was over eight miles wide
+and the objective 1500 feet higher than our camp, and over six miles away.
+If the enemy had had the nerve to stand, the position could scarcely
+have been taken; certainly not without the loss of thousands.
+==
+
+
+For this campaign he received the Queen's Medal with three clasps.
+
+
+
+
+  VI
+
+Children and Animals
+
+
+
+Through all his life, and through all his letters, dogs and children
+followed him as shadows follow men.  To walk in the streets with him
+was a slow procession.  Every dog and every child one met must be spoken to,
+and each made answer.  Throughout the later letters the names
+Bonfire and Bonneau occur continually.  Bonfire was his horse,
+and Bonneau his dog.
+
+This horse, an Irish hunter, was given to him by John L. Todd.
+It was wounded twice, and now lives in honourable retirement
+at a secret place which need not be disclosed to the army authorities.
+One officer who had visited the hospital writes of seeing him
+going about the wards with Bonneau and a small French child following after.
+In memory of his love for animals and children the following extracts
+will serve:
+
+
+==
+You ask if the wee fellow has a name -- Mike, mostly, as a term of affection.
+He has found a cupboard in one ward in which oakum is stored,
+and he loves to steal in there and "pick oakum", amusing himself
+as long as is permitted.  I hold that this indicates convict ancestry
+to which Mike makes no defence.
+
+
+The family is very well, even one-eyed Mike is able to go round the yard
+in his dressing-gown, so to speak.  He is a queer pathetic little beast
+and Madame has him "hospitalized" on the bottom shelf of the sideboard
+in the living room, whence he comes down (six inches to the floor)
+to greet me, and then gravely hirples back, the hind legs looking
+very pathetic as he hops in.  But he is full of spirit and is doing very well.
+
+
+As to the animals -- "those poor voiceless creatures," say you.  I wish
+you could hear them.  Bonneau and Mike are a perfect Dignity and Impudence;
+and both vocal to a wonderful degree.  Mike's face is exactly like the terrier
+in the old picture, and he sits up and gives his paw just like Bonneau,
+and I never saw him have any instruction; and as for voice,
+I wish you could hear Bonfire's "whicker" to me in the stable or elsewhere.
+It is all but talk.  There is one ward door that he tries whenever we pass.
+He turns his head around, looks into the door, and waits.
+The Sisters in the ward have changed frequently, but all alike "fall for it",
+as they say, and produce a biscuit or some such dainty which Bonfire takes
+with much gravity and gentleness.  Should I chide him for being too eager
+and give him my hand saying, "Gentle now," he mumbles with his lips,
+and licks with his tongue like a dog to show how gentle he can be
+when he tries.  Truly a great boy is that same.  On this subject
+I am like a doting grandmother, but forgive it.
+
+I have a very deep affection for Bonfire, for we have been through
+so much together, and some of it bad enough.  All the hard spots
+to which one's memory turns the old fellow has shared,
+though he says so little about it.
+==
+
+
+This love of animals was no vagrant mood.  Fifteen years before
+in South Africa he wrote in his diary under date of September 11th, 1900:
+
+
+==
+I wish I could introduce you to the dogs of the force.  The genus dog here
+is essentially sociable, and it is a great pleasure to have them about.
+I think I have a personal acquaintance with them all.  There are our pups --
+Dolly, whom I always know by her one black and one white eyebrow;
+Grit and Tory, two smaller gentlemen, about the size of a pound of butter --
+and fighters; one small white gentleman who rides on a horse, on the blanket;
+Kitty, the monkey, also rides the off lead of the forge wagon.
+There is a black almond-eyed person belonging to the Royal Scots,
+who begins to twist as far as I can see her, and comes up in long curves,
+extremely genially.  A small shaggy chap who belongs to the Royal Irish
+stands upon his hind legs and spars with his front feet --
+and lots of others -- every one of them "a soldier and a man".
+The Royal Scots have a monkey, Jenny, who goes around always trailing a sack
+in her hand, into which she creeps if necessary to obtain shelter.
+
+The other day old Jack, my horse, was bitten by his next neighbor;
+he turned SLOWLY, eyed his opponent, shifted his rope so that he had
+a little more room, turned very deliberately, and planted both heels
+in the offender's stomach.  He will not be run upon.
+==
+
+
+From a time still further back comes a note in a like strain.
+In 1898 he was house physician in a children's hospital at Mt. Airy,
+Maryland, when he wrote:
+
+
+==
+A kitten has taken up with a poor cripple dying of muscular atrophy
+who cannot move.  It stays with him all the time, and sleeps most of the day
+in his straw hat.  To-night I saw the kitten curled up under the bed-clothes.
+It seems as if it were a gift of Providence that the little creature
+should attach itself to the child who needs it most.
+==
+
+
+Of another child:
+
+
+==
+The day she died she called for me all day, deposed the nurse
+who was sitting by her, and asked me to remain with her.
+She had to be held up on account of lack of breath;
+and I had a tiring hour of it before she died, but it seemed
+to make her happier and was no great sacrifice.  Her friends arrived
+twenty minutes too late.  It seems hard that Death will not wait
+the poor fraction of an hour, but so it is.
+==
+
+
+And here are some letters to his nephews and nieces which reveal his attitude
+both to children and to animals.
+
+
+==
+     From Bonfire to Sergt.-Major Jack Kilgour
+
+                                        August 6th, 1916.
+
+Did you ever have a sore hock?  I have one now, and Cruickshank puts bandages
+on my leg.  He also washed my white socks for me.  I am glad you got
+my picture.  My master is well, and the girls tell me I am looking well, too.
+The ones I like best give me biscuits and sugar, and sometimes flowers.
+One of them did not want to give me some mignonette the other day
+because she said it would make me sick.  It did not make me sick.
+Another one sends me bags of carrots.  If you don't know how to eat carrots,
+tops and all, you had better learn, but I suppose you are just a boy,
+and do not know how good oats are.
+
+                                        BONFIRE His * Mark.
+
+--
+* Here and later, this mark is that of a horse-shoe.  A. L., 1995.
+--
+
+
+     From Bonfire to Sergt.-Major Jack Kilgour
+
+                                        October 1st, 1916.
+
+Dear Jack,
+
+Did you ever eat blackberries?  My master and I pick them every day
+on the hedges.  I like twenty at a time.  My leg is better
+but I have a lump on my tummy.  I went to see my doctor to-day,
+and he says it is nothing at all.  I have another horse
+staying in my stable now; he is black, and about half my size.
+He does not keep me awake at night.  Yours truly,
+
+                                        BONFIRE His * Mark.
+
+
+     From Bonfire to Margaret Kilgour, Civilian
+
+                                        November 5th, 1916.
+
+Dear Margaret:
+
+This is Guy Fox Day!  I spell it that way because fox-hunting
+was my occupation a long time ago before the war.  How are Sergt.-Major Jack
+and Corporal David?  Ask Jack if he ever bites through his rope at night,
+and gets into the oat-box.  And as for the Corporal, "I bet you" I can jump
+as far as he can.  I hear David has lost his red coat.  I still have
+my grey one, but it is pretty dirty now, for I have not had a new one
+for a long time.  I got my hair cut a few weeks ago and am to have new boots
+next week.  Bonneau and Follette send their love.  Yours truly,
+
+                                        BONFIRE His * Mark.
+
+
+                                        In Flanders, April 3rd, 1915.
+
+My dear Margaret:
+
+There is a little girl in this house whose name is Clothilde.
+She is ten years old, and calls me "Monsieur le Major".
+How would you like it if twenty or thirty soldiers came along
+and lived in your house and put their horses in the shed or the stable?
+There are not many little boys and girls left in this part of the country,
+but occasionally one meets them on the roads with baskets of eggs
+or loaves of bread.  Most of them have no homes, for their houses
+have been burnt by the Germans; but they do not cry over it.
+It is dangerous for them, for a shell might hit them at any time --
+and it would not be an eggshell, either.
+
+Bonfire is very well.  Mother sent him some packets of sugar,
+and if ever you saw a big horse excited about a little parcel,
+it was Bonfire.  He can have only two lumps in any one day,
+for there is not much of it.  Twice he has had gingerbread
+and he is very fond of that.  It is rather funny for a soldier-horse,
+is it not?  But soldier horses have a pretty hard time of it, sometimes,
+so we do not grudge them a little luxury.  Bonfire's friends are King,
+and Prince, and Saxonia, -- all nice big boys.  If they go away and leave him,
+he whinnies till he catches sight of them again, and then he is quite happy.
+How is the 15th Street Brigade getting on?  Tell Mother I recommend Jack
+for promotion to corporal if he has been good.  David will have to be a gunner
+for awhile yet, for everybody cannot be promoted.  Give my love to Katharine,
+and Jack, and David.
+
+                                        Your affectionate uncle Jack.
+
+
+Bonfire, and Bonneau, and little Mike, are all well.  Mike is about
+four months old and has lost an eye and had a leg broken,
+but he is a very good little boy all the same.  He is very fond of Bonfire,
+and Bonneau, and me.  I go to the stable and whistle, and Bonneau and Mike
+come running out squealing with joy, to go for a little walk with me.
+When Mike comes to steps, he puts his feet on the lowest steps
+and turns and looks at me and I lift him up.  He is a dear ugly little chap.
+
+The dogs are often to be seen sprawled on the floor of my tent.
+I like to have them there for they are very home-like beasts.
+They never seem French to me.  Bonneau can "donner la patte"
+in good style nowadays, and he sometimes curls up inside the rabbit hutch,
+and the rabbits seem to like him.
+
+I wish you could see the hundreds of rabbits there are here
+on the sand-dunes; there are also many larks and jackdaws.
+(These are different from your brother Jack, although they have black faces.)
+There are herons, curlews, and even ducks; and the other day
+I saw four young weasels in a heap, jumping over each other from side to side
+as they ran.
+
+Sir Bertrand Dawson has a lovely little spaniel, Sue, quite black,
+who goes around with him.  I am quite a favourite, and one day
+Sir Bertrand said to me, "She has brought you a present," and here she was
+waiting earnestly for me to remove from her mouth a small stone.
+It is usually a simple gift, I notice, and does not embarrass by its value.
+
+Bonfire is very sleek and trim, and we journey much.  If I sit down
+in his reach I wish you could see how deftly he can pick off my cap
+and swing it high out of my reach.  He also carries my crop;
+his games are simple, but he does not readily tire of them.
+
+I lost poor old Windy.  He was the regimental dog of the 1st Batt. Lincolns,
+and came to this vale of Avalon to be healed of his second wound.
+He spent a year at Gallipoli and was "over the top" twice with his battalion.
+He came to us with his papers like any other patient,
+and did very well for a while, but took suddenly worse.  He had all
+that care and love could suggest and enough morphine to keep the pain down;
+but he was very pathetic, and I had resolved that it would be true friendship
+to help him over when he "went west".  He is buried in our woods
+like any other good soldier, and yesterday I noticed that some one has laid
+a little wreath of ivy on his grave.  He was an old dog evidently,
+but we are all sore-hearted at losing him.  His kit is kept
+should his master return, -- only his collar with his honourable marks,
+for his wardrobe was of necessity simple.  So another sad chapter ends.
+
+
+                                        September 29th, 1915.
+
+Bonneau gravely accompanies me round the wards and waits for me,
+sitting up in a most dignified way.  He comes into my tent
+and sits there very gravely while I dress.  Two days ago
+a Sister brought out some biscuits for Bonfire, and not understanding
+the rules of the game, which are bit and bit about for Bonfire and Bonneau,
+gave all to Bonfire, so that poor Bonneau sat below and caught the crumbs
+that fell.  I can see that Bonfire makes a great hit with the Sisters
+because he licks their hands just like a dog, and no crumb is too small
+to be gone after.
+
+
+                                        April, 1917.
+
+I was glad to get back; Bonfire and Bonneau greeted me very enthusiastically.
+I had a long long story from the dog, delivered with uplifted muzzle.
+They tell me he sat gravely on the roads a great deal during my absence,
+and all his accustomed haunts missed him.  He is back on rounds faithfully.
+
+
+
+
+  VII
+
+The Old Land and the New
+
+
+
+If one were engaged upon a formal work of biography rather than
+a mere essay in character, it would be just and proper to investigate
+the family sources from which the individual member is sprung;
+but I must content myself within the bounds which I have set,
+and leave the larger task to a more laborious hand.  The essence of history
+lies in the character of the persons concerned, rather than in the feats
+which they performed.  A man neither lives to himself nor in himself.
+He is indissolubly bound up with his stock, and can only explain himself
+in terms common to his family; but in doing so he transcends
+the limits of history, and passes into the realms of philosophy and religion.
+
+The life of a Canadian is bound up with the history of his parish,
+of his town, of his province, of his country, and even with the history
+of that country in which his family had its birth.  The life of John McCrae
+takes us back to Scotland.  In Canada there has been much writing of history
+of a certain kind.  It deals with events rather than with the subtler matter
+of people, and has been written mainly for purposes of advertising.
+If the French made a heroic stand against the Iroquois, the sacred spot
+is now furnished with an hotel from which a free 'bus runs to a station
+upon the line of an excellent railway.  Maisonneuve fought his great fight
+upon a place from which a vicious mayor cut the trees which once sheltered
+the soldier, to make way for a fountain upon which would be raised
+"historical" figures in concrete stone.
+
+The history of Canada is the history of its people, not of its railways,
+hotels, and factories.  The material exists in written or printed form
+in the little archives of many a family.  Such a chronicle is in possession
+of the Eckford family which now by descent on the female side
+bears the honoured names of Gow, and McCrae.  John Eckford had two daughters,
+in the words of old Jamie Young, "the most lovingest girls he ever knew."
+The younger, Janet Simpson, was taken to wife by David McCrae,
+21st January, 1870, and on November 30th, 1872, became the mother of John.
+To her he wrote all these letters, glowing with filial devotion,
+which I am privileged to use so freely.
+
+There is in the family a tradition of the single name for the males.
+It was therefore proper that the elder born should be called Thomas,
+more learned in medicine, more assiduous in practice, and more weighty
+in intellect even than the otherwise more highly gifted John.
+He too is professor of medicine, and co-author of a profound work
+with his master and relative by marriage -- Sir William Osler.
+Also, he wore the King's uniform and served in the present war.
+
+This John Eckford, accompanied by his two daughters, the mother being dead,
+his sister, her husband who bore the name of Chisholm,
+and their numerous children emigrated to Canada, May 28th, 1851,
+in the ship `Clutha' which sailed from the Broomielaw bound for Quebec.
+The consort, `Wolfville', upon which they had originally taken passage,
+arrived in Quebec before them, and lay in the stream,
+flying the yellow flag of quarantine.  Cholera had broken out.
+"Be still, and see the salvation of the Lord," were the words
+of the family morning prayers.
+
+In the `Clutha' also came as passengers James and Mary Gow; their cousin,
+one Duncan Monach; Mrs. Hanning, who was a sister of Thomas Carlyle;
+and her two daughters.  On the voyage they escaped the usual hardships,
+and their fare appears to us in these days to have been abundant.
+The weekly ration was three quarts of water, two ounces of tea,
+one half pound of sugar, one half pound molasses, three pounds of bread,
+one pound of flour, two pounds of rice, and five pounds of oatmeal.
+
+The reason for this migration is succinctly stated by the head of the house.
+"I know how hard it was for my mother to start me, and I wanted land
+for my children and a better opportunity for them."  And yet his parents
+in their time appear to have "started" him pretty well, although his father
+was obliged to confess, "I never had more of this world's goods
+than to bring up my family by the labour of my hands honestly,
+but it is more than my Master owned, who had not where to lay His head."
+They allowed him that very best means of education, a calmness of the senses,
+as he herded sheep on the Cheviot Hills.  They put him to the University
+in Edinburgh, as a preparation for the ministry, and supplied him with
+ample oatmeal, peasemeal bannocks, and milk.  In that great school of divinity
+he learned the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; he studied Italian,
+and French under Surenne, him of blessed memory even unto this day.
+
+John Eckford in 1839 married Margaret Christie, and he went far afield
+for a wife, namely from Newbiggin in Forfar, where for fourteen years
+he had his one and only charge, to Strathmiglo in Fife.  The marriage
+was fruitful and a happy one, although there is a hint in the record
+of some religious difference upon which one would like to dwell
+if the subject were not too esoteric for this generation.
+The minister showed a certain indulgence, and so long as his wife lived
+he never employed the paraphrases in the solemn worship of the sanctuary.
+She was a woman of provident mind.  Shortly after they were married
+he made the discovery that she had prepared the grave clothes for him
+as well as for herself.  Too soon, after only eight years, it was her fate
+to be shrouded in them.  After her death -- probably because of her death --
+John Eckford emigrated to Canada.
+
+To one who knows the early days in Canada there is nothing new
+in the story of this family.  They landed in Montreal July 11th, 1851,
+forty-four days out from Glasgow.  They proceeded by steamer to Hamilton,
+the fare being about a dollar for each passenger.  The next stage
+was to Guelph; then on to Durham, and finally they came to the end
+of their journeying near Walkerton in Bruce County in the primeval forest,
+from which they cut out a home for themselves and for their children.
+
+It was "the winter of the deep snow".  One transcription from the record
+will disclose the scene:
+
+
+    At length a grave was dug on a knoll in the bush
+    at the foot of a great maple with a young snow-laden hemlock at the side.
+    The father and the eldest brother carried the box
+    along the shovelled path.  The mother close behind was followed
+    by the two families.  The snow was falling heavily.  At the grave
+    John Eckford read a psalm, and prayed, "that they might be enabled
+    to believe, the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
+    unto them that fear Him."
+
+
+John McCrae himself was an indefatigable church-goer.  There is a note
+in childish characters written from Edinburgh in his thirteenth year,
+"On Sabbath went to service four times."  There the statement stands
+in all its austerity.  A letter from a chaplain is extant in which
+a certain mild wonder is expressed at the regularity in attendance
+of an officer of field rank.  To his sure taste in poetry the hymns were
+a sore trial.  "Only forty minutes are allowed for the service," he said,
+"and it is sad to see them `snappit up' by these poor bald four-line things."
+
+On Easter Sunday, 1915, he wrote:  "We had a church parade this morning,
+the first since we arrived in France.  Truly, if the dead rise not,
+we are of all men the most miserable."  On the funeral service of a friend
+he remarks:  "`Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God,' --
+what a summary of the whole thing that is!"  On many occasions he officiated
+in the absence of the chaplains who in those days would have as many
+as six services a day.  In civil life in Montreal he went to church
+in the evening, and sat under the Reverend James Barclay of St. Pauls,
+now designated by some at least as St. Andrews.
+
+
+
+
+  VIII
+
+The Civil Years
+
+
+
+It will be observed in this long relation of John McCrae that little mention
+has yet been made of what after all was his main concern in life.
+For twenty years he studied and practised medicine.  To the end
+he was an assiduous student and a very profound practitioner.
+He was a student, not of medicine alone, but of all subjects
+ancillary to the science, and to the task he came with a mind braced
+by a sound and generous education.  Any education of real value
+a man must have received before he has attained to the age of seven years.
+Indeed he may be left impervious to its influence at seven weeks.
+John McCrae's education began well.  It began in the time
+of his two grandfathers at least, was continued by his father and mother
+before he came upon this world's scene, and by them was left deep founded
+for him to build upon.
+
+Noble natures have a repugnance from work.  Manual labour is servitude.
+A day of idleness is a holy day.  For those whose means do not permit
+to live in idleness the school is the only refuge; but they must prove
+their quality.  This is the goal which drives many Scotch boys
+to the University, scorning delights and willing to live long,
+mind-laborious days.
+
+John McCrae's father felt bound "to give the boy a chance,"
+but the boy must pass the test.  The test in such cases
+is the Shorter Catechism, that compendium of all intellectual argument.
+How the faithful aspirant for the school acquires this body
+of written knowledge at a time when he has not yet learned the use of letters
+is a secret not to be lightly disclosed.  It may indeed be
+that already his education is complete.  Upon the little book
+is always printed the table of multiples, so that the obvious truth
+which is comprised in the statement, "two by two makes four",
+is imputed to the contents which are within the cover.
+In studying the table the catechism is learned surreptitiously,
+and therefore without self-consciousness.
+
+So, in this well ordered family with its atmosphere of obedience,
+we may see the boy, like a youthful Socrates going about
+with a copy of the book in his hand, enquiring of those,
+who could already read, not alone what were the answers to the questions
+but the very questions themselves to which an answer was demanded.
+
+This learning, however, was only a minor part of life, since upon a farm
+life is very wide and very deep.  In due time the school was accomplished,
+and there was a master in the school -- let his name be recorded --
+William Tytler, who had a feeling for English writing
+and a desire to extend that feeling to others.
+
+In due time also the question of a University arose.
+There was a man in Canada named Dawson -- Sir William Dawson.
+I have written of him in another place.  He had the idea
+that a university had something to do with the formation of character,
+and that in the formation of character religion had a part.
+He was principal of McGill.  I am not saying that all boys who entered
+that University were religious boys when they went in,
+or even religious men when they came out; but religious fathers
+had a general desire to place their boys under Sir William Dawson's care.
+
+Those were the days of a queer, and now forgotten, controversy
+over what was called "Science and Religion".  Of that also
+I have written in another place.  It was left to Sir William Dawson
+to deliver the last word in defence of a cause that was already lost.
+His book came under the eye of David McCrae, as most books of the time did,
+and he was troubled in his heart.  His boys were at the University of Toronto.
+It was too late; but he eased his mind by writing a letter.
+To this letter John replies under date 20th December, 1890:
+"You say that after reading Dawson's book you almost regretted
+that we had not gone to McGill.  That, I consider, would have been
+rather a calamity, about as much so as going to Queen's."
+We are not always wiser than our fathers were, and in the end
+he came to McGill after all.
+
+For good or ill, John McCrae entered the University of Toronto in 1888,
+with a scholarship for "general proficiency".  He joined the Faculty of Arts,
+took the honours course in natural sciences, and graduated from
+the department of biology in 1894, his course having been interrupted
+by two severe illnesses.  From natural science, it was an easy step
+to medicine, in which he was encouraged by Ramsay Wright, A. B. Macallum,
+A. McPhedran, and I. H. Cameron.  In 1898 he graduated again,
+with a gold medal, and a scholarship in physiology and pathology.
+The previous summer he had spent at the Garrett Children's Hospital
+in Mt. Airy, Maryland.
+
+Upon graduating he entered the Toronto General Hospital as resident
+house officer; in 1899 he occupied a similar post at Johns Hopkins.
+Then he came to McGill University as fellow in pathology
+and pathologist to the Montreal General Hospital.  In time he was appointed
+physician to the Alexandra Hospital for infectious diseases;
+later assistant physician to the Royal Victoria Hospital,
+and lecturer in medicine in the University.  By examination
+he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
+In 1914 he was elected a member of the Association of American Physicians.
+These are distinctions won by few in the profession.
+
+In spite, or rather by reason, of his various attainments
+John McCrae never developed, or degenerated, into the type
+of the pure scientist.  For the laboratory he had neither the mind
+nor the hands.  He never peered at partial truths so closely
+as to mistake them for the whole truth; therefore, he was unfitted
+for that purely scientific career which was developed
+to so high a pitch of perfection in that nation which is now
+no longer mentioned amongst men.  He wrote much, and often,
+upon medical problems.  The papers bearing his name amount to
+thirty-three items in the catalogues.  They testify to his industry
+rather than to invention and discovery, but they have made his name known
+in every text-book of medicine.
+
+Apart from his verse, and letters, and diaries, and contributions
+to journals and books of medicine, with an occasional address to students
+or to societies, John McCrae left few writings, and in these
+there is nothing remarkable by reason of thought or expression.
+He could not write prose.  Fine as was his ear for verse
+he could not produce that finer rhythm of prose, which comes from
+the fall of proper words in proper sequence.  He never learned
+that if a writer of prose takes care of the sound the sense will take care
+of itself.  He did not scrutinize words to discover their first
+and fresh meaning.  He wrote in phrases, and used words at second-hand
+as the journalists do.  Bullets "rained"; guns "swept"; shells "hailed";
+events "transpired", and yet his appreciation of style in others was perfect,
+and he was an insatiable reader of the best books.  His letters are strewn
+with names of authors whose worth time has proved.  To specify them
+would merely be to write the catalogue of a good library.
+
+The thirteen years with which this century opened were the period
+in which John McCrae established himself in civil life in Montreal
+and in the profession of medicine.  Of this period he has left a chronicle
+which is at once too long and too short.
+
+All lives are equally interesting if only we are in possession
+of all the facts.  Places like Oxford and Cambridge
+have been made interesting because the people who live in them
+are in the habit of writing, and always write about each other.
+Family letters have little interest even for the family itself,
+if they consist merely of a recital of the trivial events of the day.
+They are prized for the unusual and for the sentiment they contain.
+Diaries also are dull unless they deal with selected incidents;
+and selection is the essence of every art.  Few events have any interest
+in themselves, but any event can be made interesting by the pictorial
+or literary art.
+
+When he writes to his mother, that, as he was coming out of the college,
+an Irish setter pressed a cold nose against his hand, that is interesting
+because it is unusual.  If he tells us that a professor took him by the arm,
+there is no interest in that to her or to any one else.
+For that reason the ample letters and diaries which cover these years
+need not detain us long.  There is in them little selection, little art --
+too much professor and too little dog.
+
+It is, of course, the business of the essayist to select;
+but in the present case there is little to choose.  He tells of
+invitations to dinner, accepted, evaded, or refused;
+but he does not always tell who were there, what he thought of them,
+or what they had to eat.  Dinner at the Adami's, -- supper at Ruttan's, --
+a night with Owen, -- tea at the Reford's, -- theatre with the Hickson's, --
+a reception at the Angus's, -- or a dance at the Allan's, -- these events
+would all be quite meaningless without an exposition of the social life
+of Montreal, which is too large a matter to undertake, alluring as the task
+would be.  Even then, one would be giving one's own impressions and not his.
+
+Wherever he lived he was a social figure.  When he sat at table
+the dinner was never dull.  The entertainment he offered was not missed
+by the dullest intelligence.  His contribution was merely "stories",
+and these stories in endless succession were told in a spirit of frank fun.
+They were not illustrative, admonitory, or hortatory.
+They were just amusing, and always fresh.  This gift he acquired
+from his mother, who had that rare charm of mimicry without mockery,
+and caricature without malice.  In all his own letters there is not
+an unkind comment or tinge of ill-nature, although in places,
+especially in later years, there is bitter indignation against
+those Canadian patriots who were patriots merely for their bellies' sake.
+
+Taken together his letters and diaries are a revelation
+of the heroic struggle by which a man gains a footing in a strange place
+in that most particular of all professions, a struggle comprehended
+by those alone who have made the trial of it.  And yet the method is simple.
+It is all disclosed in his words, "I have never refused any work
+that was given me to do."  These records are merely a chronicle of work.
+Outdoor clinics, laboratory tasks, post-mortems, demonstrating, teaching,
+lecturing, attendance upon the sick in wards and homes, meetings,
+conventions, papers, addresses, editing, reviewing, -- the very remembrance
+of such a career is enough to appall the stoutest heart.
+
+But John McCrae was never appalled.  He went about his work gaily,
+never busy, never idle.  Each minute was pressed into the service,
+and every hour was made to count.  In the first eight months of practice
+he claims to have made ninety dollars.  It is many years
+before we hear him complain of the drudgery of sending out accounts,
+and sighing for the services of a bookkeeper.  This is the only complaint
+that appears in his letters.
+
+There were at the time in Montreal two rival schools,
+and are yet two rival hospitals.  But John McCrae was of no party.
+He was the friend of all men, and the confidant of many.  He sought nothing
+for himself and by seeking not he found what he most desired.
+His mind was single and his intention pure; his acts unsullied
+by selfish thought; his aim was true because it was steady and high.
+His aid was never sought for any cause that was unworthy,
+and those humorous eyes could see through the bones
+to the marrow of a scheme.  In spite of his singular innocence, or rather
+by reason of it, he was the last man in the world to be imposed upon.
+
+In all this devastating labour he never neglected the assembling of himself
+together with those who write and those who paint.  Indeed,
+he had himself some small skill in line and colour.  His hands were
+the hands of an artist -- too fine and small for a body that weighted
+180 pounds, and measured more than five feet eleven inches in height.
+There was in Montreal an institution known as "The Pen and Pencil Club".
+No one now living remembers a time when it did not exist.
+It was a peculiar club.  It contained no member who should not be in it;
+and no one was left out who should be in.  The number was about a dozen.
+For twenty years the club met in Dyonnet's studio, and afterwards,
+as the result of some convulsion, in K. R. Macpherson's.  A ceremonial supper
+was eaten once a year, at which one dressed the salad, one made the coffee,
+and Harris sang a song.  Here all pictures were first shown,
+and writings read -- if they were not too long.  If they were,
+there was in an adjoining room a tin chest, which in these austere days
+one remembers with refreshment.  When John McCrae was offered membership
+he "grabbed at it", and the place was a home for the spirit
+wearied by the week's work.  There Brymner and the other artists
+would discourse upon writings, and Burgess and the other writers
+would discourse upon pictures.
+
+It is only with the greatest of resolution, fortified by
+lack of time and space, that I have kept myself to the main lines
+of his career, and refrained from following him into by-paths and secret,
+pleasant places; but I shall not be denied just one indulgence.
+In the great days when Lord Grey was Governor-General he formed a party
+to visit Prince Edward Island.  The route was a circuitous one.
+It began at Ottawa; it extended to Winnipeg, down the Nelson River
+to York Factory, across Hudson Bay, down the Strait,
+by Belle Isle and Newfoundland, and across the Gulf of St. Lawrence
+to a place called Orwell.  Lord Grey in the matter of company
+had the reputation of doing himself well.  John McCrae was of the party.
+It also included John Macnaughton, L. S. Amery, Lord Percy,
+Lord Lanesborough, and one or two others.  The ship had called
+at North Sydney where Lady Grey and the Lady Evelyn joined.
+
+Through the place in a deep ravine runs an innocent stream which broadens out
+into still pools, dark under the alders.  There was a rod --
+a very beautiful rod in two pieces.  It excited his suspicion.
+It was put into his hand, the first stranger hand that ever held it;
+and the first cast showed that it was a worthy hand.  The sea-trout
+were running that afternoon.  Thirty years before, in that memorable visit
+to Scotland, he had been taken aside by "an old friend of his grandfather's".
+It was there he learned "to love the trooties".  The love and the art
+never left him.  It was at this same Orwell his brother first heard
+the world called to arms on that early August morning in 1914.
+
+In those civil years there were, of course, diversions:
+visits to the United States and meetings with notable men --
+Welch, Futcher, Hurd, White, Howard, Barker:  voyages to Europe
+with a detailed itinerary upon the record; walks and rides upon the mountain;
+excursion in winter to the woods, and in summer to the lakes; and one visit
+to the Packards in Maine, with the sea enthusiastically described.
+Upon those woodland excursions and upon many other adventures
+his companion is often referred to as "Billy T.", who can be no other
+than Lieut.-Col. W. G. Turner, "M.C."
+
+Much is left out of the diary that we would wish to have recorded.
+There is tantalizing mention of "conversations" with Shepherd --
+with Roddick -- with Chipman -- with Armstrong -- with Gardner --
+with Martin -- with Moyse.  Occasionally there is a note of description:
+"James Mavor is a kindly genius with much knowledge"; "Tait McKenzie
+presided ideally" at a Shakespeare dinner; "Stephen Leacock does not keep
+all the good things for his publisher."  Those who know the life in Montreal
+may well for themselves supply the details.
+
+
+
+
+  IX
+
+Dead in His Prime
+
+
+
+John McCrae left the front after the second battle of Ypres,
+and never returned.  On June 1st, 1915, he was posted to
+No. 3 General Hospital at Boulogne, a most efficient unit
+organized by McGill University and commanded by that fine soldier
+Colonel H. S. Birkett, C.B.  He was placed in charge of medicine,
+with the rank of Lieut.-Colonel as from April 17th, 1915,
+and there he remained until his death.
+
+At first he did not relish the change.  His heart was with the guns.
+He had transferred from the artillery to the medical service
+as recently as the previous autumn, and embarked a few days afterwards
+at Quebec, on the 29th of September, arriving at Davenport,
+October 20th, 1914.  Although he was attached as Medical Officer
+to the 1st Brigade of Artillery, he could not forget that he was
+no longer a gunner, and in those tumultuous days he was often to be found
+in the observation post rather than in his dressing station.
+He had inherited something of the old army superciliousness towards
+a "non-combatant" service, being unaware that in this war
+the battle casualties in the medical corps were to be higher
+than in any other arm of the service.  From South Africa he wrote
+exactly fifteen years before:  "I am glad that I am not `a medical' out here.
+No `R.A.M.C.' or any other `M.C.' for me.  There is a big breach,
+and the medicals are on the far side of it."  On August 7th, 1915,
+he writes from his hospital post, "I expect to wish often
+that I had stuck by the artillery."  But he had no choice.
+
+Of this period of his service there is little written record.
+He merely did his work, and did it well, as he always did
+what his mind found to do.  His health was failing.  He suffered
+from the cold.  A year before his death he writes on January 25th, 1917:
+
+
+==
+The cruel cold is still holding.  Everyone is suffering,
+and the men in the wards in bed cannot keep warm.  I know of nothing
+so absolutely pitiless as weather.  Let one wish; let one pray;
+do what one will; still the same clear sky and no sign, --
+you know the cold brand of sunshine.  For my own part I do not think
+I have ever been more uncomfortable.  Everything is so cold
+that it hurts to pick it up.  To go to bed is a nightmare
+and to get up a worse one.  I have heard of cold weather in Europe,
+and how the poor suffer, -- now I know!
+==
+
+
+All his life he was a victim of asthma.  The first definite attack
+was in the autumn of 1894, and the following winter it recurred
+with persistence.  For the next five years his letters abound in references
+to the malady.  After coming to Montreal it subsided; but he always felt
+that the enemy was around the corner.  He had frequent periods in bed;
+but he enjoyed the relief from work and the occasion they afforded
+for rest and reading.
+
+In January, 1918, minutes begin to appear upon his official file
+which were of great interest to him, and to us.  Colonel Birkett
+had relinquished command of the unit to resume his duties
+as Dean of the Medical Faculty of McGill University.  He was succeeded by
+that veteran soldier, Colonel J. M. Elder, C.M.G.  At the same time
+the command of No. 1 General Hospital fell vacant.  Lieut.-Colonel McCrae
+was required for that post; but a higher honour was in store,
+namely the place of Consultant to the British Armies in the Field.
+All these events, and the final great event, are best recorded
+in the austere official correspondence which I am permitted to extract
+from the files:
+
+
+    From D.M.S. Canadian Contingents.  (Major-General C. L. Foster, C.B.).
+    To O.C. No. 3 General Hospital, B.E.F., 13th December, 1917:
+    There is a probability of the command of No. 1 General Hospital
+    becoming vacant.  It is requested, please, that you obtain
+    from Lieut.-Col. J. McCrae his wishes in the matter.  If he is available,
+    and willing to take over this command, it is proposed to offer it to him.
+
+
+    O.C. No. 3 General Hospital, B.E.F., To D.M.S. Canadian Contingents,
+    28th December, 1917:  Lieut.-Colonel McCrae desires me to say that,
+    while he naturally looks forward to succeeding to the command
+    of this unit, he is quite willing to comply with your desire,
+    and will take command of No. 1 General Hospital at any time you may wish.
+
+
+    D.G.M.S. British Armies in France.  To D.M.S. Canadian Contingents,
+    January 2nd, 1918:  It is proposed to appoint Lieut.-Colonel J. McCrae,
+    now serving with No. 3 Canadian General Hospital, Consulting Physician
+    to the British Armies in France.  Notification of this appointment,
+    when made, will be sent to you in due course.
+
+
+    D.M.S. Canadian Contingents.  To O.C. No. 3 General Hospital, B.E.F.,
+    January 5th, 1918:  Since receiving your letter I have information
+    from G.H.Q. that they will appoint a Consultant Physician
+    to the British Armies in the Field, and have indicated their desire
+    for Lieut.-Colonel McCrae for this duty.  This is a much higher honour
+    than commanding a General Hospital, and I hope he will take the post,
+    as this is a position I have long wished should be filled
+    by a C.A.M.C. officer.
+
+
+    D.M.S. Canadian Contingents.  To D.G.M.S., G.H.Q., 2nd Echelon,
+    January 15th, 1918:  I fully concur in this appointment, and consider
+    this officer will prove his ability as an able Consulting Physician.
+
+
+    Telegram:  D.G.M.S., G.H.Q., 2nd Echelon.  To D.M.S. Canadian Contingents,
+    January 18th, 1918:  Any objection to Lieut.-Col. J. McCrae
+    being appointed Consulting Physician to British Armies in France.
+    If appointed, temporary rank of Colonel recommended.
+
+
+    Telegram:  O.C. No. 3 General Hospital, B.E.F.  To D.M.S.
+    Canadian Contingents, January 27th, 1918:  Lieut.-Col. John McCrae
+    seriously ill with pneumonia at No. 14 General Hospital.
+
+
+    Telegram:  O.C. No. 14 General Hospital.  To O.C. No. 3 General Hospital,
+    B.E.F., January 28th, 1918:  Lieut.-Col. John McCrae died this morning.
+
+
+This was the end.  For him the war was finished and all the glory of the world
+had passed.
+
+Henceforth we are concerned not with the letters he wrote,
+but with the letters which were written about him.  They came
+from all quarters, literally in hundreds, all inspired by pure sympathy,
+but some tinged with a curiosity which it is hoped this writing
+will do something to assuage.
+
+Let us first confine ourselves to the facts.  They are all contained
+in a letter which Colonel Elder wrote to myself in common with other friends.
+On Wednesday, January 23rd, he was as usual in the morning;
+but in the afternoon Colonel Elder found him asleep in his chair
+in the mess room.  "I have a slight headache," he said.
+He went to his quarters.  In the evening he was worse,
+but had no increase of temperature, no acceleration of pulse or respiration.
+At this moment the order arrived for him to proceed forthwith
+as Consulting Physician of the First Army.  Colonel Elder writes,
+"I read the order to him, and told him I should announce the contents at mess.
+He was very much pleased over the appointment.  We discussed the matter
+at some length, and I took his advice upon measures for carrying on
+the medical work of the unit."
+
+Next morning he was sleeping soundly, but later on he professed to be
+much better.  He had no fever, no cough, no pain.  In the afternoon
+he sent for Colonel Elder, and announced that he had pneumonia.
+There were no signs in the chest; but the microscope revealed
+certain organisms which rather confirmed the diagnosis.
+The temperature was rising.  Sir Bertrand Dawson was sent for.
+He came by evening from Wimereux, but he could discover no physical signs.
+In the night the temperature continued to rise, and he complained of headache.
+He was restless until the morning, "when he fell into a calm,
+untroubled sleep."
+
+Next morning, being Friday, he was removed by ambulance
+to No. 14 General Hospital at Wimereux.  In the evening news came
+that he was better; by the morning the report was good,
+a lowered temperature and normal pulse.  In the afternoon
+the condition grew worse; there were signs of cerebral irritation
+with a rapid, irregular pulse; his mind was quickly clouded.
+Early on Sunday morning the temperature dropped, and the heart grew weak;
+there was an intense sleepiness.  During the day the sleep increased to coma,
+and all knew the end was near.
+
+His friends had gathered.  The choicest of the profession was there,
+but they were helpless.  He remained unconscious, and died at half past one
+on Monday morning.  The cause of death was double pneumonia
+with massive cerebral infection.  Colonel Elder's letter concludes:
+"We packed his effects in a large box, everything that we thought
+should go to his people, and Gow took it with him to England to-day."
+Walter Gow was his cousin, a son of that Gow who sailed with the Eckfords
+from Glasgow in the `Clutha'.  At the time he was Deputy Minister in London
+of the Overseas Military Forces of Canada.  He had been sent for
+but arrived too late; -- all was so sudden.
+
+The funeral was held on Tuesday afternoon, January 29th,
+at the cemetery in Wimereux.  The burial was made with full military pomp.
+From the Canadian Corps came Lieut.-General Sir Arthur Currie,
+the General Officer Commanding; Major-General E. W. B. Morrison,
+and Brigadier-General W. O. H. Dodds, of the Artillery.
+Sir A. T. Sloggett, the Director-General of Medical Services,
+and his Staff were waiting at the grave.  All Commanding Officers at the Base,
+and all Deputy Directors were there.  There was also a deputation
+from the Harvard Unit headed by Harvey Cushing.
+
+Bonfire went first, led by two grooms, and decked in the regulation
+white ribbon, not the least pathetic figure in the sad procession.
+A hundred nursing Sisters in caps and veils stood in line,
+and then proceeded in ambulances to the cemetery, where they lined up again.
+Seventy-five of the personnel from the Hospital acted as escort,
+and six Sergeants bore the coffin from the gates to the grave.
+The firing party was in its place.  Then followed the chief mourners,
+Colonel Elder and Sir Bertrand Dawson; and in their due order,
+the rank and file of No. 3 with their officers; the rank and file
+of No. 14 with their officers; all officers from the Base,
+with Major-General Wilberforce and the Deputy Directors to complete.
+
+It was a springtime day, and those who have passed all those winters
+in France and in Flanders will know how lovely the springtime may be.
+So we may leave him, "on this sunny slope, facing the sunset and the sea."
+These are the words used by one of the nurses in a letter to a friend, --
+those women from whom no heart is hid.  She also adds:  "The nurses lamented
+that he became unconscious so quickly they could not tell him
+how much they cared.  To the funeral all came as we did,
+because we loved him so."
+
+At first there was the hush of grief and the silence of sudden shock.
+Then there was an outbreak of eulogy, of appraisement, and sorrow.
+No attempt shall be made to reproduce it here; but one or two voices
+may be recorded in so far as in disjointed words they speak for all.
+Stephen Leacock, for those who write, tells of his high vitality
+and splendid vigour -- his career of honour and marked distinction --
+his life filled with honourable endeavour and instinct with
+the sense of duty -- a sane and equable temperament -- whatever he did,
+filled with sure purpose and swift conviction.
+
+Dr. A. D. Blackader, acting Dean of the Medical Faculty of McGill University,
+himself speaking from out of the shadow, thus appraises his worth:
+"As a teacher, trusted and beloved; as a colleague, sincere and cordial;
+as a physician, faithful, cheerful, kind.  An unkind word he never uttered."
+Oskar Klotz, himself a student, testifies that the relationship
+was essentially one of master and pupil.  From the head of
+his first department at McGill, Professor, now Colonel, Adami,
+comes the weighty phrase, that he was sound in diagnosis;
+as a teacher inspiring; that few could rise to his high level of service.
+
+There is yet a deeper aspect of this character with which we are concerned;
+but I shrink from making the exposition, fearing lest
+with my heavy literary tread I might destroy more than I should discover.
+When one stands by the holy place wherein dwells a dead friend's soul --
+the word would slip out at last -- it becomes him to take off the shoes
+from off his feet.  But fortunately the dilemma does not arise.
+The task has already been performed by one who by God has been endowed
+with the religious sense, and by nature enriched with the gift of expression;
+one who in his high calling has long been acquainted with the grief of others,
+and is now himself a man of sorrow, having seen with understanding eyes,
+  
+    These great days range like tides,
+    And leave our dead on every shore.
+
+On February 14th, 1918, a Memorial Service was held
+in the Royal Victoria College.  Principal Sir William Peterson presided.
+John Macnaughton gave the address in his own lovely and inimitable words,
+to commemorate one whom he lamented, "so young and strong,
+in the prime of life, in the full ripeness of his fine powers,
+his season of fruit and flower bearing.  He never lost the simple faith
+of his childhood.  He was so sure about the main things, the vast things,
+the indispensable things, of which all formulated faiths
+are but a more or less stammering expression, that he was content
+with the rough embodiment in which his ancestors had laboured
+to bring those great realities to bear as beneficent and propulsive forces
+upon their own and their children's minds and consciences.
+His instinctive faith sufficed him."
+
+To his own students John McCrae once quoted the legend from a picture,
+to him "the most suggestive picture in the world":  What I spent I had:
+what I saved I lost:  what I gave I have; -- and he added:
+"It will be in your power every day to store up for yourselves
+treasures that will come back to you in the consciousness of duty well done,
+of kind acts performed, things that having given away freely you yet possess.
+It has often seemed to me that when in the Judgement those surprised faces
+look up and say, Lord, when saw we Thee anhungered and fed Thee;
+or thirsty and gave Thee drink; a stranger, and took Thee in;
+naked and clothed Thee; and there meets them that warrant-royal
+of all charity, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,
+ye have done it unto Me, there will be amongst those awed ones
+many a practitioner of medicine."
+
+And finally I shall conclude this task to which I have set
+a worn but willing hand, by using again the words which once I used before:
+Beyond all consideration of his intellectual attainments
+John McCrae was the well beloved of his friends.  He will be missed
+in his place; and wherever his companions assemble there will be for them
+a new poignancy in the Miltonic phrase,
+  
+    But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
+    Now thou art gone, and never must return!
+
+
+ London,
+   11th November, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of In Flanders Fields
+
+
+
+
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