2017 Battlefield Tour Page 06

"In Flanders Fields"

Essex Farm Advanced Dressing Station near Ypres were concrete dugouts built into the banks of the Ypres Canal. No surgery was performed there, it was purely a triage and dressing station. From there casualties were passed along the line to Casualty Clearing Stations, then on to Base Hospitals at Calais and evacuation to the UK if required....The Canadian surgeon and poet Lt. Col. John Mcrae wrote one of the most famous poems of WW1 "In Flanders Fields" at the ADS shortly after burying his friend Lt. Alexis Helmer at nearby Essex Farm Cemetery. Lt. Col McRae died of pneumonia on 28 Jan 1918 and is buried in Wimereux Military Cemetery near Boulogne. R.I.P.

As the war continued in this sector the original crude dugouts in the canal bank were extended and reinforced with concrete. They gradually developed into a series of rooms and a larger medical station was built up with huts to cope with larger numbers of wounded. The location became established as an Advanced Dressing Station (A.D.S.). As such it was one of the places along the route of evacuation to the rear of a wounded soldier from the Ypres Salient north of Ypres.