Essex Farm Cemetery

Birthplace of 'In Flanders Fields'; the dressing station where John McCrae wrote his poem in 1915

About 4 km north of Ypres, Essex Farm Cemetery is where Canadian doctor and soldier John McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" in May 1915. The Advanced Dressing Station where McCrae worked — concrete bunkers built into the canal bank — has been preserved alongside the cemetery. Standing in the bunkers, you can see exactly the stretch of canal bank and the low flat ground where the graves and the poppies were, and understand how the poem emerged from this specific landscape.

The cemetery itself contains nearly 1,200 Commonwealth burials, including that of Valentine Strudwick, a British soldier who died in January 1916 aged 15 — one of the youngest soldiers to die in the war. A small Canadian memorial at the site marks McCrae's connection to the place.

Essex Farm is accessible by bicycle or car from Ypres, along the canal bank road. The site is open and unattended; visit at any time.

things to do war memorial sight
A story
McCrae was a Canadian artillery officer and qualified physician. When his friend and former student Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915, McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service — the chaplain was not available. The following morning, sitting in the back of an ambulance, McCrae saw the poppies growing among the graves and wrote the poem that has never been out of print since.

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