Canada
John McCrae
1872–1918 Canadian Army physician and poet; author of "In Flanders Fields", 1915
John McCrae was born on 30 November 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, trained as a physician in Toronto and later taught at McGill University in Montreal. In 1914 he volunteered and became a major and medical officer of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. He treated the wounded at the Second Battle of Ypres, which opened on 22 April 1915 with a German chlorine gas attack, from a dugout by the Yser Canal. The death of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer inspired "In Flanders Fields", which appeared in Punch in December 1915 and became one of the most popular poems of the war. From June 1915 McCrae served as a lieutenant-colonel at No. 3 Canadian General Hospital, and he died of pneumonia in France on 28 January 1918.