John McCrae (Provided photo)

On the morning of Dec. 13, 1862, Generals Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet were watching the Battle of Fredericksburg unfold from their headquarters on Lee Hill. The killing would become especially brutal as ammunition ran low and soldiers fought hand-to-hand with bayonets and used muskets as clubs.

During the battle, Lee turned to Longstreet and said: “It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it.” In a Confederate victory, Union forces suffered about 12,500 casualties killed, wounded, captured, and missing. Rebel forces took approximately 5,000 casualties.

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta on Sept. 2, 1864. The fall of the South’s major city marked a major turning point in the war. During his two-and-a-half-month occupation of Atlanta, Sherman wrote a letter to city officials noting that “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Years later, addressing students at the Michigan Military Academy, Sherman stated: “War is hell.”

In the nearly half-century between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the outbreak of World War I (1914), a technological revolution had transformed the United States, Canada, much of Europe and Japan dramatically. Lee and Sherman could not have imagined how lethal and ugly warfare would become: mass-produced rifles, durable, easy to carry and accurate to 500 meters; machine guns capable of firing between 450 and 600 rounds per minute; long-range artillery pieces; armed aircraft and submarines, depth charges, tanks, land mines and flamethrowers. And perhaps the most terrifying: poison gases, phosgene, chlorine and sulfur or “mustard” gas.

With advanced weapons, enormous armies and trench warfare, it’s hardly surprising that the number of casualties was staggering. France had a population of 40 million at the start of the war and a military force of approximately 3.8 million. The Library of Congress reports that by the war’s end in 1918, France had suffered almost 1.39 million military dead and 2.67 million wounded. With a military force numbering just over 12 million, Russia had 1.7 million deaths and just under 5 million wounded.

When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, the population was approximately 103 million.

With a combined military force of 4.27 million soldiers, sailors, including members of the Coast Guard, and Marines, the nation suffered just under 117,000 dead and 192,000 wounded. Of the 650,000 military personnel from Canada and Newfoundland — combined population of approximately 8.25 million in 1914 — who served in the “Great War,” as it was called until the start of World War II, 61,000 died and 172,000 were wounded.

Born in Ontario in 1872, John McCrae became a member of the local militia and later served as an artillery officer in the Boer War (South Africa) of 1899-1902. He completed his medical training at the University of Toronto, interned at Johns Hopkins University and continued his medical studies at McGill University in Montreal.

Shortly after World War I began in July 1914, McCrae volunteered for military service. He was 41 years old and requested to be posted as either a combatant or a physician. McCrea was assigned to an artillery outfit with the dual role of artillery officer and brigade surgeon.

McCrae served at the Second Battle of Ypres (1915) in northwest Belgium, April 22 to May 25. Some Canadian troops were directly in front of the first German army chlorine gas attack of the war. In the month-long fighting at Ypres, the Canadians suffered approximately 6,000 casualties. Shortly after the death of a comrade at Ypres, McCrae composed the most famous poem of World War I.

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.

This work was published in Punch magazine in December 1915 and became world-renowned in months. British Commonwealth nations and other countries embraced the poppy as a symbol of commemoration. Lt. Colonel John McCrae succumbed to pneumonia and meningitis in France in 1918, the last year of the “Great War.”

Just prior to Memorial Day in 1922, the Veterans of Foreign Wars began distributing poppies nationwide, as the red poppy was adopted by the VFW. Beginning in 1923, “Buddy Poppies” were assembled by disabled and needy war veterans at a factory in Pittsburgh. In 1924, the VFW registered the name Buddy Poppy and it became the official flower of that organization.

Proceeds from poppy sales not only benefit veterans’ services nationwide (the VFW National Home in Eaton, Michigan, for example) but local projects as well. Poppy sales help fund the Saranac Lake VFW’s scholarship fund, with awards given annually to a number of Saranac Lake High School graduating seniors.

Long-dormant poppy seeds (up to 100 years) require exposure to light to germinate. Biologist Gary Krupnick writes that “Trench digging, bombs, and mass cemeteries decimated Europe’s landscape during World War I, causing millions of poppies to bloom on the disrupted soil.” Perhaps this was the supreme irony of World War I. The beauty of Belgium’s Flanders fields was the result of mass destruction, suffering and death.

Between 16 and 20 million people (military and civilian) died in World War I. A generation later, with more combatants, deadlier weapons and a significant increase in civilian casualties, an estimated 60 to 85 million would perish in World War II.

Red poppies are symbolic of the sacrifices made by American military personnel — and their families — since World War I. As you behold this wildflower, contemplate the brutality and insanity of war. And pray there is never a World War III.

——

Bloomingdale resident George J. Bryjak served in Okinawa and Vietnam with the First Marine Aircraft Wing.