May 25, 2014 3 min read

Dear Readers: Many of you will be enjoying your Memorial Day weekend with barbecues and picnics, but we hope you will also remember the purpose behind the observance: a day to remember those servicemen and women who died serving their country.

Please consider taking the time to visit a veterans hospital or military cemetery and pay your respects. And if you have a flag, it is appropriate to display it at half-staff until noon.

by John T. Bird of Birmingham, Ala.

We pause to remember those who died

with so much courage

so much pride.

They’ll never come back

but memories endure

to remind us of freedom: fragile, pure.

We’re worthy of their sacrifice

if we pause each day

not just on the last Monday in May.

Q. About five or six years ago, you printed a column about why we hand out poppies on Memorial Day. It had something to do with a poem from the first World War. At the time, I wasn’t that interested (sorry), but now that I have grandchildren old enough to understand history, I want them to have this information. Would you reprint it? – Not a History Teacher in Texas

A. Happy to do it. This poem is quite famous and used to be well-known in the classroom, but we don’t know whether it is still being taught as often as it once was. If not, we think it deserves to be resuscitated.

“In Flanders Field” was written in 1915 by Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D., a Canadian who served as a surgeon in the Great War. He wrote it after witnessing the death of a friend at Ypres, Belgium. McCrae died in France in 1918, at the age of 46, from pneumonia, an all-too-common battlefield ailment.

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.

Inspired by McCrae’s poem, an American woman, Moina Michael, wore poppies to honor the war dead. She also began selling poppies to raise money for the disabled veterans of the Great War. This idea spread to France and England and then to Canada and the U.S., where it is still a tradition on Memorial Day.