Who wrote the poem 'In Flanders Fields'?

The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Canadian physician and soldier John McCrae. He composed it during the First World War in 1915, after the death and burial of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer during the Second Battle of Ypres.

McCrae was serving as a medical officer near Ypres when he observed poppies growing among battlefield graves. The poem is written as a rondeau and speaks in the voice of the dead, asking the living to continue the struggle. It first appeared anonymously in the London magazine Punch on December 8, 1915, although the publication’s yearly index identified McCrae as its author.

The poem’s red poppies became an enduring symbol of remembrance for soldiers killed in war, especially in Canada and other Commonwealth countries. Readers sometimes confuse McCrae with other major First World War poets, such as Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, or Wilfred Owen, but those writers produced different bodies of work and did not write this poem.