Remembrance Day 2024

Remembrance Day 2024

In Flanders Fields

    In Flanders fields, the poppies grow

         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.

"In Flanders Fields" is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. According to legend, fellow soldiers retrieved the poem after McCrae, initially dissatisfied with his work, discarded it. "In Flanders Fields" was first published on December 8 of that year in the London magazine Punch. Flanders Fields is a common English name of the World War I battlefields in Belgium and France.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields

We pay our respects to our fallen soldiers, the ones still fighting today, and the ones who will take on that mantle of responsibility in the future, with the hope that one day no one will have to be harmed in the pursuit of peace and justice for mankind.