In Flanders Fields, the Poppies Blow...

By D. Kenyon Williams Jr. 

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.

– Maj. John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields”

As my lovely bride would be the first to tell you, TU’s petroleum engineering school did not expose me to much poetry, nor is poetry one of my passions today. However, this particular poem has always haunted me with its simple phrasing and evocation of a terrible battle. During World War I, Maj. John McCrae served in the Canadian Artillery Brigade as a surgeon in the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium, and penned this poem in May 1915 after losing a comrade and former student. Maj. McCrae was not pleased with what he had written and discarded the poem, but a fellow officer rescued the poem and sent it to newspapers in England, where it was published. The inspiration for the visual images was wild poppies that sprung up in ditches in that part of Europe in the spring.

One of the challenges of living through “history” is to recognize it as it passes. As a child growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember our local American Legion selling red silk poppies as a fundraising effort in my hometown of Skiatook. I do not recall making any connection between those red silk poppies and the deeply held appreciation my community had for the sacrifices of our military, nor do I recall making the intellectual connection between those sacrifices and what was then called “Decoration Day.” It was not until much later in life that I learned “In Flanders Fields” was the inspiration for the Veterans of Foreign Wars red silk poppies sales and that those items had been handmade by veterans as a source of income for hospitalized and disabled veterans.

For me, Decoration Day was a trek to a small cemetery near Tahlequah, where my mother’s family shared maintenance responsibilities for a private cemetery where many of my mother’s family are buried. We dutifully “decorated” graves with flowers and spent time as a family remembering those no longer with us. This event was an extended family gathering that amounted to an annual family reunion and picnic at this very modest rural cemetery. My mother’s family did not have a strong military tradition, and my father’s family did not speak of their service during World Wars I and II, which may be why I did not make the connection in my early years.

As I became involved in Boy Scouts, my adult leaders, who were ex-military, did a much better job of making the connection between Decoration Day and the sacrifices of fallen United States military men and women. But even then, I did not hear much about the history of Decoration Day.

The tradition of remembering and honoring the military dead can be traced back to ancient times. Over 24 centuries ago, an Athenian leader, Pericles, wrote of fallen heroes of the Peloponnesian War: “Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not in stone but in the hearts of men.” Here in the United States, there is a robust debate about which community can lay claim to the first Decoration Day. What is undisputed is that Decoration Day grew out of the aftermath of our Civil War.

On May 5, 1868, just three years after the conclusion of the Civil War, Gen. John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, proclaimed in General Order 11, “The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

Decoration Day remained an acknowledgment of the Civil War’s fallen, both blue and gray, until after World War I, when the day became dedicated to all our American military who died fighting in any war. It was not until 1968 that the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an act of Congress that amended the federal holiday provisions of the United States Code to establish the observance of certain holidays on Mondays, declared Memorial Day to be a national holiday.

I lived through the transition of Decoration Day into Memorial Day but was not really touched by it until the first Skiatook High School graduate came home from Vietnam for burial with full military honors. You see, I was born after World War II had ended and just at the end of what was then called the Korean Conflict. War had not touched me – until the first death of someone I really did not know but who was a part of my small community. It was then that Memorial Day took on the significance and meaning my Boy Scout leaders had tried to explain to me.

Our association has a true desire to be supportive of the military veterans of Oklahoma. Our Military Assistance Committee, led by former OBA Board of Governors member S. Shea Bracken, is active and always looking for ways to provide assistance, not just to OBA members who are ex-military but to any ex-military who might need our help. But all this support is directed, rightfully, to the living, who are also celebrated on Veterans Day. With Memorial Day coming on the cusp of the end of school and summer vacations, it is so easy for us to forget the families who have been touched by the loss of loved ones in military service. I hope these comments will help all of us to keep foremost in our minds the true meaning of Memorial Day this year.

In closing, please visualize the women of Columbia, Mississippi, who came out in the spring of 1867 to decorate the graves of the Southern soldiers who had fallen during the Civil War. Those women were moved by compassion to decorate the graves of not just the Southern soldiers but also the graves of the Northern soldiers. These acts of compassion had a healing effect on a suffering nation still recovering from the Civil War that far exceeded the simple acts themselves. I leave you with a few stanzas of the 1867 poem “The Blue and the Gray,” which was authored by New York state Judge Francis Miles Finch, inspired by the women of Columbia, Mississippi:

By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.

Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.

No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.

 

Thank you for your service!

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from content originally published in the May 2015 issue of the Tulsa Lawyer.

 

D. Kenyon “Ken” Williams Jr. is a shareholder and director at Hall Estill in Tulsa.

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Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal – OBJ 96 Vol 5 (May 2025).

Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff.