John McCrae (1872–1918) was a Canadian physician, soldier and poet. His poem In Flanders Fields, written in May 1915 during the second battle of Ypres, became one of the most famous poems of the First World War and made the red poppy the symbol of remembrance.
Doctor and soldier
John McCrae was born on 30 November 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, into a family of Scottish origin with a military tradition. He studied medicine at the University of Toronto and became a pathologist and lecturer at McGill University in Montreal.
He served as an artillery officer in the Boer War in South Africa, and wrote poems for magazines throughout his life.
Ypres
In 1914, at forty-one, McCrae volunteered as a surgeon and gunner with the Canadian forces. During the second battle of Ypres, in April and May 1915, he treated the wounded in a dressing station near the Yser canal.
On 2 May his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by a shell. McCrae conducted the burial service himself, and the next day wrote In Flanders Fields, where poppies were growing among the graves.
The poem and its fate
The poem was published anonymously in Punch on 8 December 1915 and was soon read, reprinted and recited across the British Empire and the United States.
McCrae was put in charge of a military hospital near Boulogne. Exhausted, he died of pneumonia and meningitis on 28 January 1918 and was buried at Wimereux.
Anecdotes
The poppy
The American teacher Moina Michael, moved by the poem, began in 1918 to wear and sell red silk poppies to help veterans. The idea spread to France and Britain, where the poppy appeal began in 1921.
Rejected by The Spectator
According to accounts, The Spectator turned down the poem before Punch accepted it.
Frequently asked questions
When was In Flanders Fields written?
On 3 May 1915, during the second battle of Ypres, the day after the death of McCrae's friend Alexis Helmer.
Why is the poppy a symbol of remembrance?
Because poppies grew on the battlefields of Flanders and northern France, and McCrae's poem made them the image of the war dead.
Where is John McCrae buried?
At the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Wimereux, near Boulogne, in France.