I remember learning the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” in my youth. I learned it so well, the words still come easily.
“In Flanders Fields the poppies grow…”
As Remembrance Day neared, I found a handwritten version of the poem by John McCrae where, I learned that he wrote “the poppies blow”. McCrae’s poem is his standing full face with life and death. He had performed a funeral ceremony for a very young soldier, Lieut. Alexis Helmer, who was like family, killed in 1915 by a shell burst. (Hear noted Canadian author John B. Lee describe this relationship.) Helmer’s scattered remains were gathered into sandbags, laid on a army blanket that was closed with safety pins and buried just outside McCrae’s dressing station.
NCO, Allinson watched the anguished McCrae pen the poem in a notepad and was handed it afterwords. Allinson writes, “The poem was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.”
“Blow” is much more descriptive and accurate word than “grow”. Editor errata.
I told a colleague that most authors do not read their written words; text gets changed, added, or culled as they read. Word interchanges like blow/grow reflect this and reflect that what we remember may not be historically accurate. Source information is an imperative tool for historical truth.
I remember my father dressing up in his best dress suit on Remembrance Day, donning medals to go to a veterans memorial statue where wreaths are laid in solemn ceremony. I remember never being asked along. For reasons held within him, he went alone. I remember his complaint about the war was that he suffered from chronic sinusitis. I remember not understanding his problem.
Today, I wonder how war gas affected him and wonder if his drinking was used to help deal with the pain of resulting complications. I wonder why it has taken me all these years to even think about it; 22 years have past since his death.
I view my father much differently than I did as I occasionally struggle to understand his and my mother’s lives years after they have left and I am not able to ask questions that never surfaced when they were alive.
Today, I remember my parents; I feel closer to understanding them than I did when they were beside me. Passing time has helped me view my parents from a different perspective, without the intense emotions of parent/child relationships that get reduced by time and given authentic reflection.
Today, I feel wrong about an attitude that I adopted about Remembrance Day: If the world really was to become truly peaceful, I felt one should forget rather than remember. Today, I have shifted toward honest reflection and remembering, using information from multiple, authentic witnesses.
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