HISTORY   Tags: history  

If you want to read a novel of WWI, this is it!

Interesting book which provides neatly dividied chapters and covers both sides of the conflict.

With this cover, how can you resist?

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In the December 18, 1915 issue of Punch magazine an anonymous bit of verse first appeared.  From this obscure beginning the poem would become the most recognized verse to come out of that Great War which we now know as World War I.  Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918) was a Canadian physician who had served in the Boer War, and found himself at the Western Front after a battle sitting and thinking about a friend who had been killed that very day.  Saddened by his personal loss he took pen in had and wrote "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.

John McCrae died at the Western Front in 1918.  Little would he know how much his poem would mean to so many.  Every year on November 11, I honor my Grandfather who was a soldier in World War 1 by attending the service held at the National World War 1 Memorial in Kansas City.