Page:In Flanders Fields and Other Poems.djvu/115

South Africa this customer had required of him a similar service when the South African war broke out.

Either 'in esse' or 'in posse' John McCrae had "always been going to the wars." At fourteen years of age he joined the Guelph Highland Cadets, and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. As his size and strength increased he reverted to the ranks and transferred to the Artillery. In due time he rose from gunner to major. The formal date of his "Gazette" is 17-3-02 as they write it in the army; but he earned his rank in South Africa.

War was the burden of his thought; war and death the theme of his verse. At the age of thirteen we find him at a gallery in Nottingham, writing this note: "I saw the picture of the artillery going over the trenches at Tel-el-Kebir. It is a good picture; but there are four teams on the guns. Perhaps an extra one had to be put on." If his nomenclature was not correct, the observation of the young artillerist was exact. Such excesses were not permitted in his father's battery in Guelph, Ontario. During this same visit his curiosity led him into the House of Lords, and the sum of his written observation is, "When someone is speaking no one seems to listen at all."

His mother I never knew. Canada is a large place. With his father I had four hours' talk [93]