Essex Farm Cemetery & Site John Mc Crae

For more than two years (from April 1915 to July 1917) the front ran along the canal that flows behind this cemetery. The Germans were dug in on the far side; the Allies held this western bank mainly. The cemetery was started close to a series of dug-outs in the canal embankment, where a first-aid post was set up. You can still visit the remains of this post, just visible to the left of the cemetery.

It was in these shelters that the Canadian surgeon John McCrae wrote the poem 'In Flanders Fields'. At this time, the shelters were not yet made of concrete, but were just holes dug out of the earthen bank. The poem opens with the lines 'In Flanders fields the poppies blow...' His best friend had just been buried nearby and the poppies were in full bloom. Poppies grew everywhere on the churned ground of the battlefields.

After the Armistice, the poppy became the symbol of the First World War: red for blood and black for mourning. McCrae was only in Ieper for a few months, but died of pneumonia and meningitis in 1918 at Wimereux near Boulogne. He was just 45 years old.

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