Our Jack Goes West: A Commemorative Novelette

by military historian, Susan Raby-Dunne is the fictionalized story of the last days and hours of Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae beginning at No.3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) and ending at the No.14 British Officers Hospital in Wimereux, France. On the centenary date marking the 100th year since his death, the story commemorates the service and struggles of John McCrae in his last days of service. It also illustrates the cost of war service by studying its effect on both a soldier and a war physician. John McCrae was both. He began his service in WWI as both an artillery soldier, and a surgeon. John McCrae was known to be shell shocked and this story shows the esteem in which he was held, but also his struggle with the malady now known as PTSD. His legacy is the internationally loved poem of the Great War, In Flanders Fields, which is still memorized and recited to this day in Commonwealth countries on Remembrance Day, and on Veterans Day.