From my Desk
Looks like winter is here. I don ' t know about anyone else, but I love the cold nights. Snuggle under the doona and sleep comfortably. My idea of heaven on earth.
It ' s time to check the electric blanket and all heating devices for fire safety. It’ s also the time to stock up on hot chocolate and marshmallows.
There are still plenty of activities to get involved in, in Hay. June long weekend will see a multitude of visitors in town for the Dustdrinkers Ball, Mini Nationals and June Bowls Carnival.
Skydive Oz is coming to Hay on the 7th June. Apparently it’ s an“ experience you’ ll never forget.” Printed Post would love to hear from anyone who does the jump, to share your thoughts.
Catch you‘ round the town
Contact Printed Post: 02 6993 2016 0437 044 930 susanjohnston01 @ bigpond. com
Sue
Thanks to Gail Rosewarne for contributing this poem
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD( 1872-1918) Canadian Army
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.
John McCrae was a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, at Ypres.
http:// www. arlingtoncemetery. net / flanders quotes John as having said " I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades!”
One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae ' s dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l ' Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing the poem.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling the lines of verse in a notebook.
The poem was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.
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