Alone and forlorn in the bloody field
Outside the first aid post
Glowing red in the dull, brown dirt
The lonely poppy stands

A gentle east wind blowing
Moving with hearts and minds
The Colonel scribbles in his pad
Events he can’t really understand

Mentioned in despatches
The poem recalls the time
When brave soldiers one and all
For freedom, fought and died

A doctor in a former life
He tended soldiers’ wounds
For seventeen days in Flanders fields
He cut, consoled and stitched

And for a moment, outside the tent
He sits to write from the heart
About “Seventeen days of Hades!”
And of the deaths he saw.

Little did the Colonel know
The scribble on his pad
Would one day be the watchword
For all in remembrance.

The Colonel left a legacy
His lines forever known
“In Flanders’ Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row.”*


Joan R Opie, Stockton
*In Flanders Field by Colonel John McCrae