In Flanders fields the poppies blow

JOHN MCCRAE was a physician who, after enlisting with the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery in 1914, became the first of his countrymen to be made a consulting surgeon of the British Army. Within a year, he was tending the wounded of the second Battle of Ypres. Inspired by the makeshift grave of a friend killed in the fighting, he wrote a poem that began with the simple lines:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row.

Reflecting the poignant spectacle of the crosses set was published anonymously in magazine. Before long, the verse had so caught the public imagination that the common poppy became the adopted Flower of Remembrance for the British and Commonwealth war dead—and has remained so to this day.