Credit given where credit is due, you're right Lieutenant-Colonel David McCrae "Born in Guelph, Ontario, on November 30, 1872". Check out http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/mccrae
Credit given where credit is due, you're right Lieutenant-Colonel DavidJohn McCrae "Born in Guelph, Ontario, on November 30, 1872". Check out http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/mccrae
I'm a volunteer tour guide at the University of Guelph - and part of our tour guide training states that the infamous "cannon" on campus, "Might have been used in the War of 1812". Being an ardent history student and someone who has read the book "The College on the Hill" - I don't need to rely on our crappy training, and know that "the cannon" was originally used by the local artillery and officer training units before the First World War. This includes the time when LCol McCrae was the head instructor, and would have drilled his young pupils on the gun. My tours always get that story rather than the less interesting "might have been used in 1812".
As for McCrae House itself, I'm going to make the pilgrimage this year (hopefully this week if I can find the time), as its something I've been meaning to do for a long while.
Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae is not buried in Flanders Fields as is suggested by the poster. He is buried in Wimereux, in the Pas de Calais region of France. He died there after succumbing to pneumonia and meningitis.
Flanders, as we all likely know, is in Belgium. McCrae served there from 1915 to 1916. Early in his servicein Flanders, he wrote the poem while sitting near a close comrade's freshly dug grave (Lt Alexis Helmer of the Royal Canadian Artillery). Lt Helmer's grave was later lost, and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate memorial.
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