The most famous Canadian poem was inspired by one of the fiercest battles of the First World War.

During a lull in the battle, Lt.-Col. John McCrae scribbled the 13 lines of In Flanders Field on a scrap of paper, describing the horror he had seen at Ypres and the hope that it would not be forgotten.

In Flanders Fields By John McCrae (1915) 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.

McCrae, a tall, boyish 43-year-old member of the Canadian Medical Corps., was an artillery veteran of the Boer War in South Africa. He went to the line in at Ypres on April 22, 1915, the first time the enemy used poison gas.

But the first attack failed and so did the next wave and the next. For 17 days the allies repulsed wave after wave of the attacking enemy.

"One can see the dead lying there on the front field," McCrae wrote 'And in places where the enemy threw in an attack, they lie very thick on the slopes of the German trenches."

McCrae worked on the bank of the Yser Canal, dressing hundreds of wounded. At times the dead and wounded actually rolled down the bank from above his dugout. Other times, while awaiting the arrival of batches of wounded, he would watch the men at work in the burial plots which were quickly filling up.

Finally, McCrae and his unit were relieved and he wrote home: "We are weary in body and wearier in mind. The general impression in my mind is one of a nightmare".

In April 1915, his closest friend was killed.

McCrae, who had written poetry since childhood in Guelph, Ont., sat down and distilled his thoughts about the war into his famous poem.

A full life ... As well as being poet and author, John McCrae was a teacher and doctor before going overseas to fight the war.

He mailed the hand-written sheet off to Punch magazine in England and it was published in December 1915.

McCrae never returned home from the war. He died of pneumonia in Boulogne, France on January 28, 1918.

Near the town of Menin, in Flanders, Belgium, they've restored as a shrine the battlefield bunker where McCrae wrote his famous poem. In memory of McCrae and other war dead, a bugler plays the Last Post every evening.

Born to a Scottish family that operated woolen and lumber mills, McCrae graduated from Guelph Collegiate with a scholarship to the University of Toronto.

He earned a B.A. and a medical degree at Toronto, did graduate work at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, served as a gunner with Canadian Field Artillery in the Boer War and then moved to Montreal.

His Guelph home is now a museum that attracts visitors from Belgium, France, Britain and Germany.

For more information, see the McCrae House website.