Events

In response to our Remembrance Day newsletter, Robert Galway shared this with us:

I enclose a photo of Essex Farm, located behind the west bank of the Ypres-Yser canal. It was here that McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields".

A bit of background to place it in context is perhaps in order. It is from my close personal friend and colleague in Aberdeen, Scotland, named Mr. Tom Scotland. In the UK when an MD gains his Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons, they strip away the honorific of Dr. and replace it with the more valued honorific of Mr., as in Mr. Scotland.

Tom is a retired Orthopedic Surgeon who spent a year in Toronto as my fellow 3 decades ago. On his return to the UK he took a bit of Canada back to Scotland with him and embraced Canada's WWI history with a passion that is not matched here at home. Once he retired, his new profession is that of Historian, at which he excels!

He has visited every battlefield and memorial on the Western Front. In fact, he takes personal bicycle tours of his UK colleagues throughout Flanders every spring. I once thought he knew every mud hole and copse of trees along the Somme. Last year he confessed he had overlooked one.

He has translated this passion into several books that have gained international recognition including down under in Australia.

With this background, you can understand why I value this image taken by Tom Scotland during one of his many visits to the Western Front.

Regards
Robert Galway