For the first time in his 73 years, Springwater Township resident Murray Deller read his cousin’s poem in public.
Slightly nervous, Deller stepped up to the microphone during the Remembrance Day ceremony at Springwater Provincial Park on Monday morning and offered some background on the poem and his cousin, Lt. Col. John McCrae, the man behind one of the most famous poems in the English language, In Flanders Fields.
“It was written in about 20 minutes, at 7 a.m. on May 3, 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres,” Deller said minutes before delivering his famous cousin’s poem. “He had just finished a seven-hour shift directing the brigade's artillery.”
Deller said McCrae wrote the poem looking out from his medical dressing station, which was a hole dug into the base of the Ypres-Yser canal. Off to the side was a makeshift graveyard of crosses of the soldiers who had died at his post, including 22-year-old Alex Helmer, a medical colleague McCrae had taught at Montreal's McGill University, who had been killed by shrapnel from a German shell the day before.
Between the crosses, poppies were growing and blowing in the breeze. Larks filled the skies, singing and circling, oblivious to the artillery shelling. Canadian and British guns were blazing, the Germans returning fire.
It had been going on like that for nine days.
“The poem was initially called We Shall Not Sleep, but McCrae wasn’t satisfied with it and discarded it,” Deller said. “A young messenger soldier, Sgt. Maj. Allison, who had watched him write it, said the poem was almost an exact description of the scene outside McCrae’s medical dressing station.”
Allison collected the poem and sent it off to the papers in England.
On Dec. 8, 1915, Punch Magazine published it with the title In Flanders Fields.
As Deller began to read, the 200 or so people who attended the ceremony went silent — the only sound was the wind in the trees.
“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.
Deller’s reading was followed by a reading of A Young Soldier’s Reply, an appropriate bookend.
A few moments later, Scott Thomas, superintendent of Springwater Provincial Park, evoked the loneliness and desperation many who fought on the front lines experienced when he performed a plaintive and haunting solo version of Amazing Grace on harmonica.
Each note rang clear and true, hanging in the air for a split second before vanishing forever.
As he finished, more than a couple of people could be seen reaching for a tissue.
After the wreaths were laid and before God Save the King closed the service, master of ceremonies Wayne Cameron offered some advice.
“If you see a veteran or a currently serving member of our armed forces or front-line workers, please go up to them and say, 'thank you for your service,'” he said. “They will appreciate the gesture.”
