Monday, November 12, 2018

REMEMBERING “THE GREAT WAR”


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.
                      By John McCrae (1872-1918)

When I was in elementary school (1955-1961), one of my teachers assigned several poems for us to memorize. My teacher assigned them, but I credit my mother for teaching me the nuances of poetry recitation, pointing out where to pause and where to continue the thought. “There’s no comma at the end of that line,” she would say, “which means you continue to the next line without pausing.” She listened to me recite over and over, often while we did the supper dishes. “Don’t sing-song,” she would say. “Keep your voice even.” On a given day in school, we would stand individually before the class to recite the poem – yes, for a grade. I’m sure I was nervous, but I was prepared and confident, thanks to my mother.

When I announced to my parents that I was to memorize In Flanders Fields, the news was accepted with solemnity, almost reverence. “They know about this,” I thought to myself. My dad explained that soldiers from our country who fought in World War I had been killed and buried in Flanders (present-day Belgium), but I was just a child and the significance of that was lost on me. What he didn’t say – and what I see today – was that the author, John McCrae, himself a soldier, was speaking on behalf of the fallen. (Wikipedia tells me that Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D., was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier who served as a surgeon during World War I. He died of pneumonia before the end of the war.)

My parents, born in 1904 and 1909, both had memories of the World War I era, and one day when I was older, they talked about it.
“As the boys went off to war, we would have a picnic in the park, and everybody would go to say good-bye,” Mother said.
“You didn’t know if you would ever see them again,” I observed, suddenly struck by the poignancy of that event.
“You figured you wouldn’t,” she said, matter-of-factly. “And we had so little news of the war. We wanted to know what was happening. But when ‘Johnny Jones’ was drafted, we knew he would tell us all about it when he came back. He was such a talker! He never quit talking.” Johnny did come back, she said, but he never talked again. The war had changed him.

Poppies became a symbol of World War I, and I have another childhood memory of little artificial poppies being sold on the street in Lewiston, probably by the American Legion. Mother gave the man two dimes for two poppies. He had little safety pins available, and she pinned one on my collar and one on her own. “It means that you remember those fallen in World War I,” she said. Another time she stressed to me that the poppies were about World War I, not World War II. KW

4 comments:

drMolly, the BeanQueen said...

And if only we could learn the lessons.

Chuck said...

Thank you for the thoughtful remembrance.

Chris said...

I know the poppies started with WWI, but I think they've come to symbolize the fallen in later wars. Dad was always ready to buy those buddy poppies as we called them, and when I was teaching, I researched them and found that the ones we bought when I was little, and maybe still, were made by disabled soldiers. Such a reminder of the cost.

Kathy said...

Hi Chris!
Wikipedia has a nice article on the artificial "remembrance poppy." Its usage began about 1921 through the aforementioned poem, "In Flanders Fields." And you're right that its significance applies to those fallen in war. I just skimmed the article, but apparently some feel that its use was excessive, so that's why we don't see it so much in our country.

It didn't occur to me that I could find info online about the poppies, but I tell myself that I don't have to cover all bases.

Hello to Dr. Molly and Chuck.