"In Flanders Fields" is one of the most famous war poems ever written. Its author, John McCrae, was a medical doctor and poet who served in Europe during the First World War and wrote the poem to mark the funeral of a friend killed in the Second Battle of Ypres. It remains one of the most enduring literary expressions of the horrors of war and is perhaps the best-known poem ever written by a Canadian.<br><br>This collection of McCrae's poetry was first published in 1919, shortly after McCrae died of pneumonia contracted on the battlefields of Europe. The original edition included an appreciation of the author by Sir Andrew Macphail, another noted Canadian doctor and writer of the period.