Picture of Poppy…
Even in midsummer, when I saw the above poppy growing wild on some waste-ground near the back of the Royal Armouries museum here in Leeds, I think of the poem and the association with the trenches of the great war.
Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I and a surgeon during the battle of Ypres. He wrote the famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.
In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
My grandfather was a tommy in the Great War and was gassed at Ypres and hospitalized in England, it is possible he passed through No 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) commanded by Lt Col John McCrae. They are both now long gone, but this week I feel we should remember them and those like them.