In the spring of 1915, in the middle of the unimaginable carnage of World War I, Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae sat beside the freshly dug grave of his friend and fellow soldier, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, after presiding over his funeral during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium.
It was in that moment of grief that McCrae wrote a poem that would outlive the war itself.
In Flanders Fields gave the world a symbol for the war.
McCrae’s image of red poppies growing between the graves of fallen soldiers transformed the humble poppy into an international emblem of remembrance, worn every year to honor those who served and sacrificed.
McCrae never saw the end of the war he wrote about.
He died in uniform in 1918, three years after writing his famous lines.
On Veterans Day, w…