Inspiration Friday: Remembering the Foreign Fields

Today is Remembrance Day or Veterans Day. Perhaps not many will wear a poppy on their breast today, perhaps many will. For me, like countless others, today is not a day to celebrate war (which is a comment I hear quite often). It is a day to mourn and remember all of the soldiers who fall in the horror of battle. But also to remember those they leave behind and those soldiers who survive with visible and invisible scars.

 Last week, I quoted one of the poems in the book ACorner of a Foreign Field: The Illustrated Poetry of the First World War.

The poem “In Flanders Fields” is well-known, and also mentions the poppies that bloomed on some of the battlefields. These red poppies have become a symbol of the blood spilt in the war.

In Flanders Fields

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.

-          John McCrae

Both C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien also fought in WWI. John Garth wrote a book Tolkien and the Great War: TheThreshold of Middle-earth which I would not only recommend to the fans of Tolkien. The personal strife and hardship of people in the war is brought home vividly.

I can also recommend TheImperial War Museum Book of The First World War: A Great Conflict Recalled inLetters, Diaries and Memoirs by Malcolm Brown.

This song also has me in tears each time I hear it.