American Memorial Day, 2011

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, the day on which America pays tribute to its soldiers fallen in war, and to all its veterans.

When I was a child in school, we memorized many poems and repeated them for our teachers. It was an exercise not only in memory and public speaking but a lesson in the beauty of the English language and the emotions it can produce when put to the work of creating a poem.

The poems were about love and bravery and honor and war. Some of them will be in my heart forever.

Today, one especially comes to mind. It was written during the World War I battle of Ypres by Canadian Army Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), a doctor who was attending the wounded in that terrible field of death.

We American youngsters being raised in the aftermath of World War II learned In Flanders Fields and recited it at memorable occasions when our parents and teachers would stand smiling down on us. We had little understanding of the poem’s real meaning or the imprint it had made on our parents' generation, but we loved to recite it, letting the lines fall and rise toward the finishing words, In Flanders Fields.

Here it is for you, my Memorial Day offering, with the prayer that one day we will outgrow the need for its sorrowful truth.

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.