Essex Farm Cemetery is located on the banks of the Ypres-Yser canal by the site of the Advanced Dressing Station where Lt Col John McCrae was serving as a medical officer when he wrote his famous poem “In Flanders Fields.” I have blogged about him previously in connection with the McCrae Memorial at Eilean Donan Castle in Lochalsh, Scotland.

The cemetery contains more than 1,000 graves. Unusually for a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery its Cross of Sacrifice is located right at the entrance:-

Graves from northwest:-

From southeast. Note Yorkshire Memorial on the canal bank:-

From northeast:-

From south. Again note Yorkshire Memorial (which I shall come back to):-

Graves from Yorkshire Memorial:-

Graves from north, Yorkshire Memorial to left:-

A tree trunk has grown round the gravestone of Private J MacPherson, Seaforth Highlanders, who died on 5/7/1917, aged 33:-

Symbolic of the fact they fought and died over the same ground the cemetery holds a German grave, Franz Heger, RIR, 238, 7/8/1916:-

Grave of Rifleman V J Strudwick, The Rifle Brigade, 14/1/1916, aged 15, said to be the youngest British Empire casualty of the Great War. (There may be some doubt about this.) It is nevertheless a focus for remembrance:-

John McCrae Commemoration stone. Written in four languages, French, Flemish, English and German, with the poem itself also inscribed on the memorial along with a facsimile of the handwritten manuscript:-

The bunkers at Essex Farm Cemetery where John McCrae worked as a medic:-

Bunker interior:-

Another bunker interior:-

Bunkers, looking back up to Essex Farm Cemetery grounds:-

Information board with a photograph of how the bunkers appeared during the war:-

Lest We Forget:-

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.

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.

The above poem “In Flanders Fields” was composed by Lt Col John McCrae (who served in the Canadian army in the Second Boer War and again in the Great War as a medic) at Essex Farm Advanced Dressing Station.

A Memorial to all the Macraes who died in World War 1 is located on the outside wall of Eilean Donan Castle, Lochalsh, Scotland:-

Names on Macrae Memorial, Eilean Donan Castle, in various spellings of Macrae. These also appear on a (sc)Roll of Honour inside the castle:-

Plaque in memory of Lt Col John McCrae on outside wall of Eilean Donan Castle, Lochalsh, by the Macrae Memorial:-

The Great War is remembered through the poetry it inspired – In Flanders Fields, the works of Sassoon, Owen and Rosenberg – most of which emphasise the loss and the pity.

It’s perhaps difficult to appreciate now but there was a burst of enthusiasm for war in the immediate aftermath of its declaration in 1914. This also manifested itself in poetry particularly that of Rupert Brooke whose The Soldier perhaps epitomises a romanticisation that was to be overwhelmed by mud, gas, barbed wire, machine guns and shells.

The earlier sonnets in the sequence that ends with The Soldier take a similar tack, in particular the first line of Peace, “Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,” but also the sentiments of The Dead, “And we have come into our heritage.”

That feeling that this is what young men are made for, that their purpose is to undertake stirring deeds, is one of the first casualties of any war.