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Show "BORN OF FltfE AMD BLOOD" Officer Tell of Circumstances Under Which Colonel McCrea Wrote "In Flanders Fields." "In Flanders Fields." to quote the words of Major General Morrison, who commanded the brigade to which Lien-tenunt Lien-tenunt Colonel McCrea was attached at the . time, "was literally born of 8re and blood during the hottest phase of the second battle of Ypres. "My headquarters were In a trench on the top of the bank of the Ypres canal; and John had his dressing station sta-tion in a hole dug in the foot of the-bank. the-bank. During periods of the battle men who were shot actually rolled1 down the bank into his dressing station. sta-tion. Along from us a few hundred yards was the headquarters of a regiment, regi-ment, and many times during the 1ft days of the battle, he and 1 watched thera burying their dead whenever there was a lull. Thus the crosses,, row on row, grew into a good-sized: cemetery. "Just as lie describes, we often heard the larks singing high in the air, between the crash of the shell and the reports of the guns in the battery .iustr beside us. I have a letter from him In which he mentions having written: the poem to pass away the time between be-tween the arrival of batches of wounded, and partly as an experiment with several varieties of poetic-meter." poetic-meter." The unit with which McCrae served" was the most advanced of all the allies' al-lies' guns by a good deal, except one-French one-French battery, which stayed in n position yet more advanced for two-(Inys, two-(Inys, and the. - --'-en out. |
