In Flanders Fields

This moving poem was written in 1915 by Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae (1872-1918), a Canadian doctor who was also a Brigade Surgeon stationed in France during World War One. His duties there were many: Head of a Canadian military field hospital, physician, surgeon, stand-in chaplain, and occasional gunner. His soldier-patients came from both sides in the war. Dr. McCrae, however, suffered from chronic asthma and bronchitis for most of his adult life, which I believe left him highly vulnerable to serious airborne infections by the time he got to France in 1914. I also feel that Dr. McCrae's lungs were further weakened by his heavy responsibilities as a soldier and a physician on the frontline. He died on January 28, 1918, age 45, from pneumonia complicated by meningitis.


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Link to the Wikipedia entry on John McCrae: [link]