Poems

1914-1918 Reference

Remembering

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The Ypres Salient, 2 May 1915

It is believed that doctor John McCrae (30 November 1872-28 January 1918) began the draft for his famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' on the evening of 2 May, 1915 in the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres. He was serving as a Major and military doctor and was second in command of the 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery. The field guns of his brigade's batteries were in position on the west bank of the Ypres-Yser canal, about two kilometres to the north of Ypres. The brigade had arrived there in the early hours of 23 April.

The Death of Lieutenant Alexis Helmer

Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was an officer in the 2nd Battery, 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery and had become good friends with John McCrae. On the morning of Sunday 2 May Alexis left his dugout and was killed instantly by a direct hit from an 8 inch German shell. What body parts could be found were later gathered into sandbags and laid in an army blanket for burial that evening. Alexis was 22 years old and a popular young officer. Before the outbreak of war he had graduated from McGill University with a degree in Civil Engineering. He was the son of Elizabeth I. Helmer of 122, Gilmour St., Ottawa, and the late Brigadier General R. A. Helmer.

Near to the 1st Canadian Brigade's position on the canal bank there was a small burial ground which had originally been established during the First Battle of Ypres in the autumn of the previous year, 1914. The Second Battle of Ypres began on 22 April 1915 and by early May the burial ground also contained graves of French and Canadian casualties. It became known as Essex Farm British Military Cemetery.

Lieutenant Helmer was buried on 2 May. In the absence of the chaplain Major John McCrae conducted a simple service at the graveside, reciting from memory some passages from the Church of England's 'Order of Burial of the Dead'. A wooden cross marked the burial place. The grave has since been lost. Lieutenant Alexis Helmer is now commemorated on Panel 10 of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres; he is one of the 54,896 soldiers who have no known grave in the battlefields of the Ypres Salient.

It is believed that the death of Alexis Helmer was the inspiration for McCrae's poem 'In Flanders Fields'. The exact details of when the first draft was written may never be known because there are various accounts by those who were with McCrae at that time.

One account says that he was seen writing the poem sitting on the rearstep of an ambulance the next day while looking at Helmer's grave and the vivid red poppies that were springing up amongst the graves in the burial ground.

Another account says that McCrae was so upset after Helmer's burial that he wrote the poem in twenty minutes in an attempt to compose himself.

A third account by his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Morrison, states that John told him he drafted the poem partly to pass the time between the arrival of two groups of wounded at the first aid post and partly to experiment with different variations of the metre.

Lieutenant Colonel Morrison wrote about the small burial ground where Alexis Helmer was originally buried:

"A couple of hundred yards away, there was the headquarters of an infantry regiment and on numerous occasions during the sixteen day battle, we saw how they crept out to bury their dead during lulls in the fighting. So the rows of crosses increased day after day, until in no time at all it had become quite a sizeable cemetery. Just as John described it, it was not uncommon early in the morning to hear the larks singing in the brief silences between the bursts of the shells and the returning salvos of our own nearby guns." (1)

During 1915 John McCrae sent the poem to 'The Spectator' magazine. It was not published and was returned to him. It was, however, published in 'Punch' magazine on 8 December 1915.

Acknowledgements

(1) From the papers of Edward W B Morrison, featured in A Crown of Life: The World of John McCrae, by Dianne Graves, p. 202

A Crown of Life: The World of John McCrae, by Dianne Graves

In Flanders Fields, The Story of John McCrae, by John F Prescott

Photograph 1: Lieutenant Alexis Helmer. Featured in A Crown of Life: The World of John McCrae, by Dianne Graves, p.

Photograph 2: (IWM neg. no. 100418) Photograph of original 1914-18 grave markers in Essex Farm by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum Department of Photographs

Link

McCrae House, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The birthplace of John McCrae.

Copyright Joanna Legg & Graham Parker © 2000 All rights reserved