John McCrae

John McCrae (1872–1918) was a Canadian physician, soldier and poet, born in Guelph, Ontario. He served as a gunner in the Second Boer War before returning to a career in medicine, then rejoined the army at the outbreak of the First World War. In May 1915, after presiding over the burial of a friend and former student killed at the Second Battle of Ypres, he wrote "In Flanders Fields," the poem that made him one of the war's best-known voices. He died of pneumonia and meningitis in January 1918 while commanding a Canadian field hospital in France.