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Show . ! "BORN OF FIKE AMD riLOOD" r Officer Telia of Circumstances UdS, Which Colonel McCrea Wrots "In Flanders Fields." v "In Flanders Fields," to quote tha words of Major General Morrison, who commanded the brigade to which Lieu- tenant Colonel McCrea was attached, at the time, "was literally born ot Are and blood during the hottest phase of the second battle of Ypres. "My headquarters were In a trench on tho 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. During periods of the battle men who were shot actually rolled down the bank into his dressing station. sta-tion. Along from us a few hundred yards was the headquarters of a regi- ment, and many times during the 18 J'"' days of the battle, he and I watched; hji them burying their dead whenever t 1 T' ' there was a lull. Thus the crossea,- iA row on row, grew into a good-sized' 1 cemetery. Hi, "Just as lie describes, we often heard the larks singing high in the air, between the crash of the shell and the-reports the-reports of the guns In the battery just beside us. I have a letter from him In wjiich he mentions luring 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 bya good deal, except one French battery, which stayed In a position yet more advanced for two-days, two-days, and then had tn ho tnken out. |