Adele D. Oliver


Community Manager, Lotusland, Canada

Lest We Forget - Nov 11th, 2023

This is the Douaumont Ossuary, a memorial containing the skeletal remains of 130. 000 French and German unidenified soldiers who died on the battlefield during the Battle of Verdun in World War I. It is located in Douaumont-Vaux, France, within the Verdun battlefield, and immediately next to the Fleury-devant-Douaumont National Necropolis. (taken in 2005)

Remembrance Day
More than 100 years after Armistice Day, the end of the 1st World War where 61 000 Canadian soldiers died .. and still the wars go on ... and soldiers and civilians die .... and veterans return physically or mentally injured ....

The first chapter of In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (a 1919 collection of poems by John McCrae) gives the text of the poem as follows:
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.

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