Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for May 25, 2009

you’re right gracie, everyone should honor our brave men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice after all freedom isn’t free

Your are so right, Gracie.

Gracie, I agree! :-)

Ohh Gracie, well said ….. the word sacrifice means so much when it comes to the giving of a person life. And regardless of our views of war, lives is what has been lost and should always be honored and paid the utmost serious respect.

I guess the question could always be, how much can each of us sacrifice or want to sacrifice?

That’s right Gracie. Ahem.. Papi? Tia Carmen? Baldo?

Well said, Gracie. Thanks to all of those who have died for us.

Muy buean Gracilla!

Thanks to all who have died and all who serve. Better to thank them now than when it’s too late.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

Lt. Col. John McCrae

^ It’s my Memorial Day Tradition.

Thanks to all our brave men and women!

LibrarianInTraining, Thank you for sharing that, it was very nice.

Thanks for sharing that wonderful piece As a Veteran I know it will be appreciated by many

bald, thank you. And not just for the comment! :)

My grandfather was in Korea. This was his favorite poem. It’s funny, after I got jilted by a Marine, I swore off military men forever. Then I met my hubby. His biological father was a Marine, his father is a Marine, his grandfathers were Marines, his Uncle was a Marine, he was born on a Marine base, and if he hadn’t been born with CP, he said he would have been a Marine.

God’s plans are kinda funny that way.

All of that to say, I have an insider’s view on the military. And they need our support, now more than ever!

So thank you for serving our country. And rest assured, my children will thank you, too!

God Bless America! <3

I’ll add my thanks to those who have defended us and our freedoms. And to all those who have supported them in that defense - families, friends and others who support the troops around the world and at home!

LibrarianInTraining, the poem or poetry either is so awesome. By the way, where is the Flanders fields? :-) Hey y’all! Wish all of you and us a Happy Memorial Day! Enjoy a nice day!

WildMustang:

Flanders is a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Over the course of history, the geographical territory that was called “Flanders” has varied.

McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men – Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans – in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:

“I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days… Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.”

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae’s dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l’Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. “His face was very tired but calm as we wrote,” Allinson recalled. “He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.”

When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:

“The poem was exactly 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.”

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.

Here’s the link to the site I found:

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm

Librarian - Thanks for the great history lesson!

May God bless all those who serve and have served to help keep us free.

I memorized that poem when I was in school and I can still recite it.