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Show "BORN OF FIRE AMD BLOOD" Officer Tells of Circumstances UndOfr Which Colonel MoCrea Wrota "In Flanders Fields." v "In Flanders Fields," to quote the' words of Major General Morrison, who commanded the brigade to which Lieutenant Lieu-tenant Colonel McCrea was attached, at the time, "was literally born of ftre and blood during the hottest phase of the second battle of Ypres. "My headquarters were In a trench on the top of the bnnk of the Ypres canal ; and John had his dressing station sta-tion In a hole dug In the foot of the bank. During periods of the battle men who were shot actually rolled down the bank Into his dressing station. sta-tion. Along from us n few hundred yards was the headquarters of a regiment, regi-ment, and many times during the 16 days of the battle, he and I watched them burying their dead whenever there was a lull. Thus the crosses, row on row, grew Into a good-sized cemetery. "Just as he 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 just 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." The unit with which McCrae served was the most advanced of all the allies' al-lies' guns by a good deal, except one French battery, which stayed in a position yet more advanced for two days, and then bad to H f-"ken out. |