John McCrae
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Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae, MD (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 is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem In Flanders Fields.
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[edit] Biography
McCrae was born in McCrae House in Guelph, Ontario, the grandson of Scottish immigrants. He attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute, and later studied medicine on a scholarship at the University of Toronto. While attending the university he joined the Zeta Psi Fraternity (Theta Xi chapter; class of 1894) and published his first poems. He was a member of The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada while studying at the University of Toronto, during which time he was promoted to Captain.
In 1902, he was appointed resident pathologist at Montréal General Hospital and later also became assistant pathologist to the Royal Victoria Hospital Montreal. In 1904, he was appointed an associate in medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Later that year, he went to England where he studied for several months and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 1905, he set up his own practice although he continued to work and lecture at several hospitals. He was appointed pathologist to the Montréal Foundling and Baby Hospital in 1905. In 1908, he was appointed physician to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Infectious Diseases.
In 1910, he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay to serve as expedition physician .
McCrae served in the artillery during the Second Boer War, and upon his return was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911 (although he also taught at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec)
When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany at the start of World War I, Canada, as a Dominion within the British Empire, declared war also. McCrae was appointed as a field surgeon in the Canadian artillery and was in charge of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. McCrae's friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle, and his burial inspired the poem, In Flanders Fields, which was written on May 3, 1915.
From June 1, 1915 McCrae was ordered away from the artillery to set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Dannes-Camiers near Boulogne-sur-Mer, northern France. C.L.C. Allinson reported that McCrae "most unmilitarily told [me] what he thought of being transferred to the medicals and being pulled away from his beloved guns. His last words to me were: 'Allinson, all the goddam doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and more fighting men.'"[1]
'In Flanders Fields' appeared anonymously in Punch on December 8, 1915, but in the index to that year McCrae was named as the author. The verses swiftly became one of the most popular poems of the war, used in countless fund-raising campaigns and frequently translated (a Latin version begins In agro belgico...). 'In Flanders Fields' was also extensively printed in the United States, which was contemplating joining the war, alongside a 'reply' by R. W. Lillard, ("...Fear not that you have died for naught, / The torch ye threw to us we caught...").
For eight months the hospital operated in Durbar tents (donated by the Begum of Bhopal and shipped from India), but after suffering storms, floods and frosts it was moved up to Boulogne-sur-Mer into the old Jesuit College in February 1916.
McCrae, now "a household name, albeit a frequently misspelt one",[2] regarded his sudden fame with some amusement, wishing that "they would get to printing 'In F.F.' correctly: it never is nowadays"; but (writes his biographer) "he was satisfied if the poem enabled men to see where their duty lay."[3]
On January 28, 1918, while still commanding No 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne, McCrae died of pneumonia. He was buried with full honours[4] in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission section of Wimereux Cemetery, just a couple of kilometres up the coast from Boulogne. McCrae's horse, "Bonfire", led the procession, his master's riding boots reversed in the stirrups. McCrae's gravestone is placed flat, as are all the others, because of the sandy soil.
[edit] In Flanders Fields
A collection of his poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems[5] (1918), was published after his death.
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The poem was written upon a scrap of paper upon the back of Colonel Cosgrave, in the trenches, during a lull in the bombings on May 3, 1915, after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before (as recited to his grandson). The poem was first published on December 8, that year in Punch magazine, London.
[edit] Legacy
McCrae was the co-author, with J. G. Adami, of a medical textbook, A Text-Book of Pathology for Students of Medicine (1912; 2nd ed., 1914). He was the brother of Dr. Thomas McCrae, professor of medicine at John Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and close associate of Sir William Osler.
McCrae was the great uncle of former Alberta MP David Kilgour and of Kilgour's sister Geills Turner, who married former Canadian Prime Minister John Napier Turner.
Several institutions have been named in McCrae's honour, including John McCrae Public School (part of the York Region District School Board in the Toronto suburb of Markham, Ontario), John McCrae Public School (in Guelph, Ontario), John McCrae Senior Public School (in Scarborough, Ontario) and John McCrae Secondary School (part of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in the Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven). The current Canadian War Museum has a gallery for special exhibits, called the The Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Gallery. Guelph is home to McCrae House, a museum created in his birthplace.
The Cloth Hall of the city of Ieper (Ypres in English} in Belgium has a permanent war remembrance[6] called the In Flanders Fields Museum, named after the poem.
There are also a photograph and short biographical memorial to McCrae in the St George Memorial Church in Ypres.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Prescott (1985), p. 99
- ^ Prescott (1985), p. 106
- ^ Prescott (1985), p. 107
- ^ *Burial record with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
- ^ ''In Flanders Fields, and Other Poems, available at Project Gutenberg.
- ^ [1]
[edit] External links
- Guelph Civic Museum McCrae House
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Works by John McCrae at Project Gutenberg
- John McCrae in Flanders Fields — Historical Essay, illustrated with many photographs of John McCrae
- Free audiobook of In Flanders Fields from LibriVox
- For occurrences of In Flanders Fields in film, see John McCrae at the Internet Movie Database
- In Flanders Fields museum, ieper, Belgium
- Lost Poets of the Great War, a hypertext document on the poetry of World War I by Harry Rusche, of the English Department, Emory University. It contains a bibliography of related materials.
