In Flanders Fields
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.
Originally, he thought he had first met the man on the field.
It was the Great War, and they were in France, typically (though for those first few months, he had seen neither hide nor hair of his former French guardian – only Arthur). The other man was a major and a brigade surgeon, and the best of his kind, Matthew had heard. The other would always be running around, yelling out orders, manning the guns, and performing on-the-spot surgery on the wounded soldiers coming in with a handful of assistant medics at his side.
John McCrae was brilliant.
The nation had learned – after talking to him, of course – that the brigade surgeon was Canadian-born of Scottish decent, growing up in Guelph, Ontario, in a family with a military background.
That last tidbit wasn't too much of a surprise. But even before knowing this, even before knowing the other man's name, Matthew had had a feeling.
It was neither a good or bad feeling – Matthew didn't want to give it that kind of label, really – but instead, the nation could only register the feeling of future greatness. Even beyond what McCrae had already accomplished.
The man, after all, already had a few degrees regarding medicine, had taught at various big institutions in Central-Eastern Canada, and had worked as a professional at a couple of hospitals. McCrae had even set up his own practise before.
But greatness wasn't always a good thing. Matthew knew that easily, even though he hadn't suffered from it himself; both Arthur and Francis had told him stories about greatness, and even Alfred, but beyond the fantastical stories that they had told him, only one thing stood out from their words as he moved through the battle fields in Europe.
There is no glory in war.
John McCrae would not earn his greatness from war. Not like that, not from battles or heroics.
Matthew knew this before the words hit the paper, before the thoughts entered McCrae's mind. (That's what the young nation would like to think.)
But he could not understand why he had not recognised the Scottish-Canadian man until a few days after they had met each other again. They had met first at a lecture at McGill University, and Matthew had even conversed with the man about poetry with that feeling in his gut, he remembers now.
It would forever remain a mystery to him.
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.
But they were in Ypres now, a little town in north-west Belgium. Matthew was still recovering from the effects of the chlorine gas that the German army had broken out a couple of weeks ago. Not only had he came in contact with the deadly weapon himself, but he had also felt it when a great number of Canadian army situated here suffered from it too. It had been terrifying to see the first line of men falter and collapse, screaming and gasping for breath, but they had held the line, and Matthew was incredibly proud.
The casualties were still huge. One of McCrae's friends and an ex-student had been killed the day before, and now the personification of Canada was watching the man contemplate a blank sheet of paper with sorrowful eyes yet with an expressionless face. They were bouncing along in the back of a medical field ambulance, with only the sound of the whistling wind to accompany them.
"We are…" Matthew jumped slightly at the sound of his own soft voice. He had not meant to speak. But John had already looked towards him, and so the physically younger man decided to continue. He raised his voice just a little higher to be heard over a particularly loud rattle of equipment.
"We are in the fields of Flanders."
The older man blinked, and slowly wrote down 'May 3, 1915' at the top of the page. The moment continued in relative silence, and soon the automobile slowed and Matthew hopped out.
That was the last that Matthew had seen of the man before the other was transferred to a Canadian General Hospital in northern France, but not before Matthew returned to that same ambulance later that day to find a scrap piece of paper lying on McCrae's seat with the poem written down.
The blond pocketed the poem with a sad smile on his face after reading it – beautiful, like the rest of the other's works. But he doubted the man would want his name out to the public, so when Matthew returned to London for a meeting, he sent it to the Punch Magazine for it to be published anonymously. It was printed on December the 8th.
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.
He did not see the lieutenant colonel again until after the man had died of pneumonia and meningitis at the General Hospital he worked at in France, three years later at the end of January. Matthew attended the man's funeral with great sadness, having been unable to congratulate the older man on being appointed consulting physician to the First British Army, or to even see his friend before his death.
Author's Notes:
This is a depressing piece of writing. (There is no flow, its being tugged in all sorts of directions, I'm following no plot line, just writing, what am I doing-!) By the end it was actually painful to continue writing, I have to admit.
Besides that…
"Nation" is a generalization –Canada was still a member of the British Empire at the time.
McCrae actually wrote the poem while sitting in a dugout waiting for the wounded to arrive, not in the back of an ambulance, which is what Wikipedia said (WikiWiki bad!). I, however, used the truck setting as a plot device (Matthew and McCrae separating).
The poem was actually sent to Punch via mail by Francis Scrimger, who was the officer to save the poem from being discarded, as McCrae had originally rejected it from his notebook. So, uh, more playing around with facts.
I threw this little ficlet together in about two hours, with research. –noms Canadian government/university sites– This is an un-beta'd piece of work (a load of BS), and, simply put, a bit of uncoordinated, atrocious writing. I hope my other Hetalia fanfics turn out better.
That being said, this is also the first completed Hetalia fanfic I have ever written. (This fanfic was written November 11, 2011; it has not been edited.)