Days – Dark Deeds

I cheat, just a little with the date. These words were written on 03 May 1915 by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a physician with the Canadian forces. The poem “In Flanders Fields” surely stands alongside “Dulce et Decorum est” and “The Soldier” as the greatest war poems in the way they impact on our senses.

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.

Maybe it was the second battle of Ypres, which began on the 22nd ,that inspired him. Today we know the scale of the slaughter. In April 1915 the general population were only just beginning to realise that this was a long war. Casualty figures were withheld and massaged by the authorities. Ypres is notorious not just for the number of dead and injured but the manner of their death and disfigurement. For the first time on the Western Front the Germans used poison gas attacks on a large scale. Quite apart from the horrendous deaths many of the injured carried the ill effects for the rest of their (shortened) lives.

Three days later on 25th April Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Anzac Cove and the British and French at Cape Helles. Thus began the Gallipoli Campaign. Sad to relate less than one month later those same troops in Anzac Bay were being shelled from behind. So much for military planning. A campaign, launched with hopes of a swift victory was mired in chaos. Things never got better and matters ground on to an ignominious withdrawal.

In the midst of this the 25th marked the start of the Armenian Genocide with the deportation of their nobles from Constantinoble. History has a tragic way of repeating itself, some forty years later the same group were targeted by Stalin.

At the start of the month another long-running racial conflict was “celebrated” when Jess Willard knocked out Jack Johnson in the 26th round (that’s right 26th) of their heavyweight world title fight in Havana, Cuba. I use celebrated advisedly, this was precisely how the victory was seen by the white Americans. Willard had brought the championship back to the white race.

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