John McCrae

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John McCrae

Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae, MD (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist, 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.

McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario and attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute. He then 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). He also rose to the command of the Toronto militia, the Queen's Own Rifles, and published his first poems.

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). In 1910 he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay.

When the British declared war on Germany at the start of World War I, Canada, as a member of the British Empire, also declared war. 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 1 June 1915 McCrae was ordered away from the artillery to set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Dannes-Camiers near Boulogne. 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]

For eight months the hospital operated in Durbar tents (donated by the Beghum of Scopal and shipped from India), but after suffering storms, floods and frosts it was moved up to Boulogne into the old Jesuit College in February 1916.

'In Flanders Fields' appeared anonymously in Punch on 8 December 1915, but in the index to that year McCrae was named as the author. The verses swiftly became the most popular English poem 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 USA, 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..."). 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]

In 1918, while still commanding No 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne, McCrae caught pneumonia and meningitis and died.

A collection of his poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1918), was published after his death. McCrae was also 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 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.

[edit] Notes

^ Cited in Prescott, John F. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae. (Boston Mills Press, 1985), p. 99.
^ Prescott, John F. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae. (Boston Mills Press, 1985), p. 106.
^ Prescott, John F. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae. (Boston Mills Press, 1985), p. 107.