IX

Dead in His Prime



John McCrae left the front after the second battle of Ypres,
and never returned. On June 1st, 1915, he was posted to
No. 3 General Hospital at Boulogne, a most efficient unit
organized by McGill University and commanded by that fine soldier
Colonel H. S. Birkett, C.B. He was placed in charge of medicine,
with the rank of Lieut.-Colonel as from April 17th, 1915,
and there he remained until his death.

At first he did not relish the change. His heart was with the guns.
He had transferred from the artillery to the medical service
as recently as the previous autumn, and embarked a few days afterwards
at Quebec, on the 29th of September, arriving at Davenport,
October 20th, 1914. Although he was attached as Medical Officer
to the 1st Brigade of Artillery, he could not forget that he was
no longer a gunner, and in those tumultuous days he was often to be found
in the observation post rather than in his dressing station.
He had inherited something of the old army superciliousness towards
a "non-combatant" service, being unaware that in this war
the battle casualties in the medical corps were to be higher
than in any other arm of the service. From South Africa he wrote
exactly fifteen years before: "I am glad that I am not `a medical' out here.
No `R.A.M.C.' or any other `M.C.' for me. There is a big breach,