As we enter Memorial Day Weekend, it is right and proper to remember the ones who gave The Last Full Measure so that we might have a level of liberty and freedom never known in world history before our magnificent, glorious, truly exceptional Nation was born. What better way to remember and honor them than by recalling what has been called one of the greatest War Memorial Poems of all time, In Flanders Fields, written by Dr. John MacRae in 1915.

He and a young friend, Alexis Helmers, joined the 18,000 soldiers of the First Canadian Division near Ypres, Belgium, and it was during this battle that the Germans unleashed the first major poison gas attacks of the war. The interesting history of how the poem was born was described as follows:

On 2 May, Alexis Helmer was killed. Because the brigade chaplain was absent, McCrae—as the brigade doctor—conducted the burial service for his friend. Later, at Helmer’s grave, he wrote a few lines of verse that were the beginning of the poem “In Flanders Fields.”