My poem "Courage of Youth, Battle of Ypres, Flanders Field" was selected by the OCR [Archive] - Debate Policy

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Tyr-Ziu Saxnot

04-08-2018, 10:15 AM

My poem titled, "Courage of Youth, Battle of Ypres, Flanders Field" has been selected by the (OCR)...

My poem titled, "Courage of Youth, Battle of Ypres, Flanders Field" has been selected by the (OCR)...
This request was sent here directly to Jim, although the poem is also presented, at PoetrySoup.com.
I have given my permission because I view it as a most worthy cause(education) and am honored they considered this poem..
If anybody, can give me more information on this British organization, either here in comment or by way of private message here, I'd appreciate it very much.
Thanks...

Below is a copy of the official request, given as reference of the organization requesting educational use of my poem.-Tyr

From: Stina Cuthbert <ocr.copyright@ocr.org.uk>
Subject: Copyright permission request from OCR #3 - 20180088

Message Body:
On 14th February 2018 and 13th March 2018 I wrote to you to request permission to reproduce copyright material. As yet, I have not received any response from you, so am writing again to remind you of the request. I am writing on behalf of Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR), to inform you that an item for which we believe you to be the copyright holder has been selected to appear in one of our forthcoming exam papers. We would therefore like to request your permission to use the material, in an electronic format via our website after the exam has been sat. The exam paper will be made publicly available online for five years, from August 2020.

When considering granting permission, it may help you to know that OCR is an exempt charity and, as such, a not for profit organisation; it is a subsidiary of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. Please email us at ocr.copyright@ocr.org.uk and we can send you a copy of the exam material we would like to use.

Kind Regards
Stina Cuthbert

Edited to add the poem..--Tyr

Courage of Youth, Battle of Ypres, Flanders Field
(A Tribute)

Tough as nails young man with a red right hand
red-fire and whiskey ran in his blood.
Courageous seed of vast and cold hard land
quick temper, power of a surging flood.
Seeker of life, its promised mysteries
rash gambler with all he would ever own.
Born on ship in high wind swept, roaring seas
toughest warrior his town had ever grown.

Met his fate by volley of red-hot lead
buried on ground scared and battle blasted.
Aye boys, fodder that machine guns were fed
fools marching to death, long as it lasted.

Now flowers cover up and Time denies
scenes of battle torn soil and blood-red skies.

R.J. Lindley
April 23rd, 1975

SONNET-(DEATH AND WAR'S FUTILITY)
Tribute to Courage of Youth-- Second Battle of Ypres, April 22nd 1915 .

Note- added - 8-26-2017

Wiki-
The name Flanders Fields is particularly associated with battles that took place in the Ypres Salient, including the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Passchendaele. For most of the war, the front line ran continuously from south of Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast, across Flanders Fields into the centre of Northern France before moving eastwards — and it was known as the Western Front.

The phrase originates from a poem titled In Flanders Fields by Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, inspired by his service during the Second Battle of Ypres. The fields were not maintained for years before they were made into a memorial. Today Flanders Fields is home to thousands of poppies.

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Found this while rummaging through some of my old poems. Decided not to edit it. Leave it as it was composed over 42 years ago..
Added the note for those not familiar with that battle and its horrific carnage, primarily from the insanity of large bodies of troops marching into direct machine gun fire.

Copyright © Robert Lindley | Year Posted 2017

Taco Junkie

04-08-2018, 10:18 AM

jimnyc

04-08-2018, 10:28 AM

I setup a small website for Tyr mid to late last year or so, which holds a small handful of his poetry, and any amount can be added. I think she used this solely as a method to contact Tyr directly, which was actually contacting me directly.

I was thrilled to be the one to relay the news to Tyr!!

Well done and well deserved my friend!!

gabosaurus

04-08-2018, 10:46 AM

Many congrats, Tyr! Any plaudits you earn are richly deserved. :beer:

Tyr-Ziu Saxnot

04-11-2018, 09:40 AM

A friend emailed me this link that he had found and said, it was one of the best he had ever found on the author of, "In Flanders Field"" about how the poem came to be written and later recognized as perhaps the greatest war poem ever written.......
Noting that this year 2018 marks the 100 year anniversary of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae's death...

I thought it a fitting tribute to present it here and share this information about this great poet I have always admired..
I was very pleased to see the fine picture of the man in uniform with his dog.... -Tyr

http://www.centenarynews.com/article/100-years-ago-in-flanders-fields-poet-john-mccrae-dies-

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae and his dog Bonneau (Photo: Library and Archives Canada)

100 Years Ago: 'In Flanders Fields' poet John McCrae dies
Posted on centenarynews.com on 28 January 2018

|

The Canadian doctor, soldier and poet who wrote 'In Flanders Fields' died on 28 January 1918 after falling ill in France. Author Chris Dickon reflects on Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae's life and legacy.

It would not be until the time of the Armistice in November 1918 that one of the most enduring poems of the just concluded First World War would become widely read in the United States and Europe. It had been written on the Ypres battlefield in 1915, and its author, Dr John McCrae, had died of pneumonia and meningitis on 28 January 1918. He had long since been buried in the communal cemetery at Wimereux, France.

The story of the writing and publication of his poem, In Flanders Fields, is told in various contradictory versions, some of them more interesting than others. But the story of John McCrae himself is that of a solid, kind and thoughtful man, an animal lover who was known to always have a dog or horse at his side, strong and straightforward in his conduct of war.

Surgeon

Born near Guelph, Ontario on 30 November 1872, he had started writing poetry as a child, though none of it would match the eventual acclaim of his inspiration at Ypres. With training in Canada, the United States and United Kingdom, he became a surgeon, and he knew death. He had performed more than 400 autopsies as a pathologist at McGill University in Montreal, was published in the medical journals of the day, and had been forever affected by the death of a child in his care during time at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.

Concurrent military training took McCrae to the Second Boer War of 1899 -1902, and returned him to service as a Major in the Canadian Field Artillery in World War I. Though he would have preferred to stay in battle, he was assigned after Ypres to set up a Canadian general hospital near Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he died 100 years ago in 1918.

A memorial seat, inscribed with lines from 'In Flanders Fields' at CWGC Wimereux Communal Cemetery, Dr John McCrae's last resting place (Photo: Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

One version of the story of his signal poem is that of a creation of the moment quickly abandoned by its author and nearly lost. In that telling, he had just buried a friend (a student of his at McGill) under cover of the darkness of the night, then sat in an ambulance overlooking the battlefield and wrote the poem straight through. Then, reading it back to himself, he decided it was not very good, balled it up and threw it in a wastebasket, from which it was rescued by an observer and sent to Punch magazine in London, where it was published anonymously.

Other versions of the story tell of McCrae’s own sending of the labored-over poem to Punch after it had been rejected by The Spectator of London, and the delivery of worldwide acclaim when his identity was discovered soon thereafter.

Whatever the truth of the matter, In Flanders Fields became itself an active participant in the war effort of the time and in the consideration of war in the future. It was quickly used to recruit soldiers and sell war bonds. Then, at the time of the war’s end, it was published in the American magazine Ladies Home Journal, which accelerated its effect into the following decades and until the present time.

Timeless

It was the poem’s imagery of red poppies that would give it a timeless effect. Poppies had been associated with war going back to mythology. Their opium derivatives had been associated with the Trojan wars, and it was believed that they seemed to grow in profusion in battlefield cemeteries as an expression of the blood of the dead. With the publication of the poem, they eventually became the symbols of the mortal and physical sacrifice of war.

In the United States, the determination of Moina Michael, a war secretary for the YMCA of New York City, led to the adoption of the red poppy as a symbol of remembrance by the American Legion in 1920. In France, Anna Guerin of the French YMCA led a similar movement to the allied nations of the war, extending as far as New Zealand. The small cloth or paper recreation of the red poppy with green stem became the symbol of the British Legion Remembrance Day in 1921.

John McCrae's grave at Wimereux Communal Cemetery (Photo: Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

One hundred years after the death of John McCrae, the red poppies can still be found sold across the world on Remembrance or Veterans days, and still growing in many of the rural fields of Europe, seemingly on the strength of their own history. In Flanders Fields is still perhaps the most recited poem in the cemeteries of World War I.

Chris Dickon is author of The Foreign Burial of American War Dead, from which this is adapted, and the recent A Rendezvous with Death: Alan Seeger in Poetry, at War.

© Chris Dickon & Centenary News

Images courtesy of Library and Archives Canada C-046284 (John McCrae); Commonwealth War Graves Commission-CWGC (Wimereux memorial & grave)