The Great War Produced Some Great Poetry
A century later, verses written by soldiers and other witnesses to the destruction still haunt.
Do you remember that stirring poem about poppies, taught to millions of Americans in elementary school? Years later, the second stanza still rings in my ear: “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.”
“In Flanders Fields,” by Canadian soldier John McCrae, has survived time’s pull. A hundred years after the raging guns ceased and the ashes of war swept over millions of tombstones, the words still haunt. But the poem’s background makes...