In Flanders Fields by John McCray, who died in 1918.

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place.

And in the sky, the larks still bravelyly 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 Flandersfields.

Flanders Fields is in Belgium where much of World War I was concentrated. The Germans

invaded through Belgium to attack France in August of 1914. And because of the British and French resistance to the attack, much of the German advance,

well, it stopped short of Paris and a lot of it was, I won't say trapped exactly, but kind of

trapped in Belgium, which is northeast of France.

You had to get through Belgium to get to France because of the mountains.

Well, Flanders is a place where there's fields.

And in those fields, poppies are blowing, it says, between the crosses. It's a cemetery already.

So many people had already died, and this poem was written, published in December of 1915,

which is just a year and a half into the war. Already there's this makeshift, I suppose, cemetery.

Why are poppies blowing between the crosses?

Interestingly, because poppies, which is now the flower that we use to remember World War I,

and people even make them out of cloth and put them on their shirts on Armistice Day,

or we call it Remembrance Day, on armistice day or we call it

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