In Flanders Field

This year we had to make a research assignment for history. Mine was about world war 1. During the task I learned the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. The poem is about the Poppies. Poppies are a kind of flower.

The poem was written by the Canadian soldier John Macrae. He wrote the poem in 1915 when he was at the front in Ieper. But he didn’t make it to the end, he died in 1918 because of a shot wound.

The poppies were the only flowers growing at the battlefields during the war. They are a symbol for the first world war. Because the leafs are red like the blood of the soldiers, the inside of the flower is black which is the color of mourning. And you can also see a cross in the inside. In the poem the flowers mean several things. He wrote about them because it were the only flowers he saw that period, but the flowers had also a narotic effect. soldiers made morphine with the flower. That you can decude from the part: ‘We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.’

I liked the poem from the first time i read it. you can find several meanings about the Poppies in the poem. You can see it as a poem with a positive meaning or with a negative meaning. The Poppies also grow in my backyard.