Major John McCrae was a Canadian surgeon, a graduate of Toronto University. He survived the horrors of the intense fighting in the Ypres Salient in 1915 and was moved to write this poem after conducting the service - the chaplain was away - for a young Canadian friend, Lieut. Alexis Helmer, who had been killed in action.

For about twenty minutes he sat and wrote, watching the wild poppies blowing in the nearby cemetery, just north of Ypres. Another young soldier came across him and watched him for a while: He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave..

When he had finished McCrae handed the pad to the young man who commented, afterwards, that the scene was just as the poem described with the poppies that morning being blown by a gentle east wind.
(picture: Zandvoorde British Cemetery, Noel's burial place)