CMAJ Humanities Essay John McCrae on death Heavy gunfire again this morning. Lieut. H[elmer] was killed at the guns. His diary’s last word were, ‘It has quieted a little and I shall try to get a good sleep.’ I said the Commital [sic] Service over him, as well as I could from memory. A soldier’s death! — John McCrae, letter of Sunday 2 May 1915 1 he poetry of Canadian physi - cian and soldier Dr. John T Alexander McCrae (1872– 1918) can be viewed as revolving around a single idea: The presence and surpassing beauty of death, often for a martial purpose. This is perhaps best exemplified in his most famous work, s m u the World War I memorial poem and e s u M perennial Remembrance Day favourite, h p l In Flanders Fields . The poem starts e u with that gentle emblem of oblivion, G the poppy: John McCrae at the summer home of Edwin Packard at Kennebunkport, Maine, in September 1903. In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky Take up our quarrel with the foe: “bloodthirsty little poem.” 1 I concur, it is The larks, still bravely singing, fly To you from failing hands we throw blood-slaked, but clearly it is also aes - Scarce heard amid the guns below. The torch; be yours to hold it high. thetically earned, for its author has con - If ye break faith with us who die templated the subject many times Note the understated “our” which We shall not sleep, though poppies before. In Flanders Fields followed a refers to the dead who populate the grow number of poems that used the dead as fields. The second stanza is more In Flanders fields. their speaking subjects, including explicit, personifying death: Penance , A Song of Comfort , Disarma - Unquestionably the poem, which was ment , The unconquered dead and The We are the Dead. Short days ago used widely on war bonds advertisements Night Cometh . McCrae’s prose We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, and other promotional efforts, became a antecedent to In Flanders Fields , an arti - Loved and were loved, and now we lie , kind of cattle call to recruitment, but its cle published much earlier about his In Flanders fields. popularity transcends its use in market - involvement in the Boer War, also hon - ing. The reason why this rondeau ours death and sacrifice: Death is McRae’s great subject. It became so popular and why it is the vehi - “The same evening I attended service occupied huge aspects of his work as cle for remembrance of all the Common - in the Cathedral … there was a strange both a physician and a soldier and, judg - wealth countries is that it concisely, and appropriateness that one of the hymns ing by how frequently it appears in his with simple, but not easy rhymes, articu - should be ‘Conquering Kings their titles 4 9 art, one can conclude it possessed his lates struggle. It is an accounting of the make From the foes they captive make.’ 7 1 9 imagination too. But as is so typical of feelings of men who are dying and whose For, stretching over the hill from the 0 . j a McCrae, ever the industrious soldier and dying, while not glorified, demands a cer - south wall in long dark rows, lay two m c / 3 doctor, even his imagination was put to a tain respect. He acknowledges this thousand graves, where men slept that 0 5 1 useful purpose. Thus what would respect by using the proper noun: Death. King Death had led captive, who were . 0 1 : I become his most cited poem moves McCrae’s first biographer, John done with Kingdoms and republics; men O D earnestly to argument: Prescott, called In Flanders Fields a whose message goes to the Empire, to CMA J•NOVEMBER 10, 2009 • 181(10) 717 © 2009 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors Humanities the voice of a new colony that they had mention, at the least, shadow and dark - grounding in pathology was vital to suc - won by blood, — ‘O stranger, go thou; ness. Prescott, wrote that “Many of the cess in medicine.” 4 Nevertheless, the fit and tell our people that we are lying here poems written in McCrae’s early man - between McCrae and pathology in the having obeyed their words.’” 1 hood, and some written after 1900, have modern sense is undeniable. Prescott Here too, McCrae has capitalized and a preoccupation with death. The achieve - quotes the following inscription by personified Death, but the piece differs ment of peace after death was a constant McCrae, which has an ancient origin, in from In Flanders Fields in that it is theme in his poetry.” 1 It is not widely the 1902 autopsy book of the Montréal squared against sacrifice. Underlying it is known that McCrae helped MacPhail General Hospital: the question: “Is this expenditure worth with The Book of Sorrow , a collection of Here begynneth ye Booke of ye it?” A simple restatement of the verse poems about bereavement and sorrow. It Deade, wherin is fayrely set foorth ye McCrae quotes might be “Generals die was over 500 pages long. last state of four Hundred and seven - in bed.” The dead of Flanders emphati - teen persones, that have departed from cally care about the purpose and mean - this lyfe; wherein be tabled diverse and ing of the battles they fought; the dead in straunge and fearsome condicions that this earlier piece are “done with king - have leddde to ye same final ende: God doms and republics.” Despite these mis - have them of his grace. givings, which are rather atypical in the McCrae oeuvre, the attitude of profound Our lyfe is but a Winter’s Day respect toward death is of a piece with Some only breadfast and away. the famous poem. As Prescott states, Others to dinner stay, and are fulle “There remained with him always an s fedde. m u e awareness of life’s transience and a fer - s The oldest man but suppes, and goes u 1 M to bedde. vent commitment to duty.” h p l e McCrae was not a poet composing u Large is his dette, that lingers out the G / o odes from afar or during peacetime; he i day. d u t S He that goes soonest has the least to was in the thick of things as both a sol - n o 9 S dier and physician. Before he was a doc - pay!! & n tor, he was closely involved with the a m r militia and won an award for being the o It could be argued that McCrae, best drilled cadet in Ontario. He served N well-liked and sought after by women, in the Boer War as a soldier, rather than McCrae, pictured here in his World only expressed what really concerned a physician. In World War I, he was not War I uniform, was on holiday in Eng - him when he sat down to write poetry. only a brigade surgeon, he was also, land on Aug. 4,1914, when Canada McCrae’s biographer of note, Dianne declared war on Germany. He immedi - rather unusually, second-in-command of ately volunteered. Graves, writes, “Outwardly John could the brigade and gave combat orders. In always be relied upon to appear cheer - one of the typical gestures that no doubt ful and to present the lighter side of his contributed to his own death by pneu - Why this morbidity? In medical nature in his daily dealings with the monia, he insisted in sleeping in tents school, choosing the career of pathology, world at large. Underneath his friendly, like the regular men and not in officers’ as McCrae did, is tantamount to an outgoing exterior, however, he looked huts until his health so declined that he admission that one wishes to practise at everyday life through the conscious - was ordered to do so. All of this is to say medicine divorced from patient contact. ness of a personal spiritual dimension. that McCrae earned his right to com - The cliché is that the nascent pathologist A reflective sadness pervaded much of ment upon the soldierly duty to be called is not well-disposed or skillful with peo - his writing….” 4 to die. He was a professional expert in ple. But this was not the case with Graves speculates about the origins death in all three careers: soldier, doctor McCrae. Both his biographers take great of McCrae’s morbidity. She transcribes and poet. And, in contrast to other war pains to emphasize McCrae’s genuine part of a letter that McCrae wrote to his poets, including Sigfried Sassoon and affability, describing him as hale and the mother about his first love who died of Wilfred Owen, he emphatically believed possessor of an inexhaustible trove — typhoid: “Perhaps it is because I was in the causes — God and country — he not a one repeated — of anecdotes. He brought into nearer connection with was engaged in. kept the company of people such as the death, than I have ever been before, that Even the most cursory glance at humourist Stephen Leacock, was a dar - I think so much about it.” 4 It is likely this McCrae’s oeuvre cannot escape its mor - ling of Sir William Osler and beloved by love, so refreshing in McCrae’s poetic bidity, its concern with death. In the the students he instructed at McGill Uni - output, and so against type, is the stimu - definitive pamphlet of McCrae’s poetry versity in Montréal, Quebec.