Called the most talented Canadian physician of his time, John McCrae (1872-1918) achieved international fame by his poem, "In Flanders Fields." The most popular English-language poem of the First World War, it has made the poppy inseparable from memories of war.
John McCrae's life was a microcosm of the years of tumultuous changes in late Victorian Canada. Son of Scottish pioneers, he fought in the Boer and First World Wars, taught medicine art McGill University, was a member of the influential English-speaking elite of Montreal, and a friend of the great and near-great. Deeply religious, he was marked by kindliness and laughter.
This book describes the full-blooded vigour of John McCrae's early and middle years, the writing of "In Flanders Fields" at the height of a battle in 1915, the impact of the poem, and the tragedy of his last years working in a Canadian hospital in war torn France.
Canadians formed the only all-volunteer overseas army of any of the major invading forces. They quickly commanded respect among senior Allied planners and on D-Day they were assigned Juno Beach. From the beach at Bernieres-sur-Mer to Falaise, and up the coast to the channel ports to the Scheldt, Nijmegen, the Rhineland, and ultimately near war's end into heavily defended Holland where the Dutch population faced starvation, these volunteers pushed forward relentlessly, usually in small sections, a point man in front, covering each other. This is the story from the regiment members themselves
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