We Went to France and Belgium

When we first flew in to Paris we rented a car and drove out to Normandy to tour the historical D-Day beaches. It touched our hearts and made us proud to be Americans.

This poem was written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D. from the Canadian Army. It was written during a battle in WWI and is a lasting legacy of that battle in 1915. After burying a friend he sat in the back of an ambulance and penned these lines.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

On the day we visited the American cemetery this poem came to my mind and while out of an earlier war and not written by an American it somehow seemed appropriate as we walked among our fellow citizens who died in Normandy beginning in 1944.


Names of the fallen wall.

Youth Rising From the Sea

This is not a poppy and the poem is from WWI and we were not in Flanders Fields but it seemed appropriate

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
Scare 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 falling 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.