In Flanders Fields
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae
John McCrae describes the scene before him as he sits in Flanders Fields. He is constantly reminded of war and memories of it, but he takes a brief moment to get away from it all, looking all around him at the beauty of nature in order to forget about the war going on below.
In the second paragraph, McCrae describes himself and all the other soldiers as 'the Dead' because he feels so detached from the world he came from. He writes everything he would have been doing if he were not in a war, and ends the paragraph with a thought of predetermined death in Flanders Fields.
In the final paragraph, McCrae urges the reader to take up his cause so that he and the countless other soldiers would not die in vain. He explains that he will not rest peacefully if nobody follows in his footsteps and fights for what he believed in.