Page 104 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2022 - Online Magazine

HONORING SENIORS

Remembering

Flanders Fields

by Bari Wenglein

Hospice of Lubbock Volunteer Service Coordinator and
Chairman of We Honor Veterans Committee
Inspiration

orld War I, and civilians were killed, soldiers every day. He was
also known as resulting in the worst mass surrounded by the dead and
Wthe Great War, killing the world had ever the dying. In a letter written
began in 1914 after the seen. to his mother, McCrae
assassination of Archduke described the battle as a
Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Countless articles and nightmare:
His murder catapulted the stories emerged from those
world into a war across who experienced trauma “For seventeen days and
Europe that lasted until from the Great War. One of seventeen nights none of us
1918. these was the famous “In have had our clothes off,
Flanders Fields” war poem, nor our boots even, except
Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, written by Lieutenant- occasionally. In all that
Germany, and the Ottoman Colonel John McCrae, a time while I was awake,
Empire, known as the Canadian doctor, soldier, gunfire and rifle fire never
Central Powers, fought and poet. ceased for sixty seconds ...
against the Allied Powers, And behind it all was the
consisting of France, Russia, McCrae fought in the constant background of
Italy, Canada, Great Britain, Second Battle of Ypres the sights of the dead, the
Japan, Romania, and the in the Flanders region of wounded, the maimed, and
United States. Belgium, where the German a terrible anxiety lest the
army launched one of the line should give way.”
Unlike other wars before first chemical attacks in
it, the Great War presented the history of war. They Exhausted and weary,
the horrific combat style of attacked French positions McCrae found comfort in
trench warfare, introduced north of the Canadians with his poetic writing to help
the use of deadly chlorine gas on April 22, deal with the grief and
machinery, and launched 1915, but were unable to trauma from the death of
the use of poison gas. break through the Canadian Alexis Helmer, his close
line, which held for over friend who was killed
Although the Allied Powers two weeks. In the trenches, in battle on May 2, 1915.
were victorious, more John McCrae tended Because a chaplain was
than 16 million troops hundreds of wounded not available, Dr. McCrae

104 Lubbock Senior Link