Their wool uniform rubbed skin raw.
The lice infections irritated more.
Their sodden feet and rotting toes,
and all before they met their foes.
But I will not grieve as veterans walk by.
I will not sob at the November sky.
No. I will proudly hold my head up high,
for those brave men who had to die.
They did not, en masse, run away, nor
did they flee at the ominous raven's caw.
And although the tears flow back through time.
It meets the song of men in their prime.
So as poppies appear behind people's eyes,
and the bugle reaches that melancholy rise.
While other's cry over their demise.
I'll don not pity's mask - nor belie.
I'll stand and smile and thank every one.
Land, air and sea for all they've done.
There'll be no white hanky - for I will not bawl.
As poppies rain down in the Albert Hall.
John McCrae wrote a poem in 1915,
Called In Flanders Fields about his dead friend Alexis Helmer,
On May the third, after he had presided over his funeral,
Where graves spattered about the poppy field so beautiful and red.
The colour represented the blood that was spilt,
Whilst remembering the energy which was so necessary;
Red for vigour, red for bloodshed, both remembered,
And red for the freedom to be understand with poignance.
Read In Flanders Fields at
http://www.inflandersfields.be/en/knowledge-center/online/the-in-flanders-fields-poem
Chill
Autumn
in the air-
drops of sanguine
red.
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