Memorial Day is a day to remember America’s war dead. Poets through the ages have done well to observe and then capture in words freedom’s toll and meaning, and Current Publishing is proud to recall two poems that capture those feelings better than most. This Memorial Day weekend, between the barbecues and parades, we hope you take the time to re-read the following, familiar as they may be, since they cut to the core of what it means to be a soldier and patriot.

“The Star Spangled Banner”

Words by Francis Scott Key

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

This, our National Anthem, can be tough to decipher since its wording, written by Francis Scott Key, is in places archaic. But key to understanding the deeper meaning of the Anthem is knowing the context in which it was written. Key was writing about one night during the War of 1812, which was Great Britain’s attempt to retake the American colonies it lost in the Revolution about a decade earlier. The British Navy, the strongest in the world, attacked the United States at Maryland’s Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore. The new nation battled back and defeated the British, and saved their fledgling nation from a repeat of tyranny.

Key’s words, written in 1814 share the author’s pride of how the flag came through the night of warfare at the fort unscathed, symbolic of how the country, and patriots who fought to defend her, also survived the onslaught unscathed.

America has been attacked numerous times throughout its 240-year history, and Key is letting us know that it can’t defend itself – it needs brave patriots to keep it free. Freedom isn’t free, as the modern slogan goes, and the Anthem is a reminder of that truth.

“In Flanders Fields”

By John McCrae

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.

“In Flanders Fields” is probably the most well known of war poetry. Flanders, located in Belgium, was the scene of gruesome trench warfare in World War I. McCrae, who was a pathologist and professor in Canada before becoming a lieutenant colonel and doctor during the war, was serving with an artillery unit in Flanders in May 1915 when he witnessed a friend die in battle. The red poppies McCrae mentions in his signature work are symbols of the soldiers he witnessed who bled and died on the battlefield there.

McCrae died of pneumonia in 1918, three years after his poem was published. The poem has been interpreted by some as an allegory not only for wartime dead, but also for anyone battling a bitter foe. The key is to never give up, keep fighting, no matter what obstacles are in the way.

While the poem deals with the stark tragedies of war, it also sends a message, in the last stanza, that McCrae’s fellow soldiers didn’t die in vain since their cause was just and worth fighting for, and that their torches were worth carrying on and holding high. Their deaths would only be meaningless if their following infantrymen gave up the effort.

This is the hope we have for all our dead servicemen and women, that they didn’t and won’t die in vain.

-John Balentine, managing editor