'In Flanders Fields'

Remembering red poppies and John McCrae's haunting poem on Memorial Day.

The USAA Poppy Wall of Honor, a Memorial Day exhibit of more than 645,000 red poppies, each flower honoring a fallen military servicemember lost since World War I, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

This Memorial Day weekend my family will gather in a small Midwestern town—Elma, Iowa, population 506, named for my great grandmother, Elma Brandmill (née Potter)—to do what we’ve done for as long as I can remember: Honor those who’ve died in service of our nation and in defense of our democratic ideals in places with names like the Somme, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Dak To, Fallujah, and Wanat. Those democratic ideals are once again under siege, most clearly and brutally in Ukraine where Russia’s war of aggression has killed more than 31,000 Ukrainians and let loose a flood of some 6.5 million refugees. Which is all the more reason to gather in a small town named for a strong and outspoken woman who married a European immigrant, Charles Brandmill, an orphan who left 19th-century Prus…