Why poppies?
In the Flanders Fields of western Belgium in the First World War, constant artillery bombardment churned and ploughed the ground. The severe disruption brought dormant poppy seeds to the surface, enabling them to germinate in the light. In mass cemeteries and wherever the ground had been broached, they grew and bloomed in profusion.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Allusions to war and poppies in Flanders date back to 1693 and the Battle of Landen (Battle of Neerwinden) which was then part of the Spanish Netherlands. In that battle, during the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697) William III was defeated by the French. One combatant wrote, ‘During many months after the ground was strewn with skulls and bones of horses and men . . . The next summer the soil, fertilised by 20,000 corpses, broke forth into millions of scarlet poppies.’
During the Great War, soldiers saw poppies everywhere, a bright splash of colour in an horrendous setting. Many of them picked the flowers, pressing them to enclose in letters home to their loved ones. There are fragile examples held in the Imperial War Museum. One was sent in a wooden cigar box with a handwritten note that said, ‘Gathered by Jack on the battlefield June 16th, 1917.’
Among those millions who saw the fields of poppies was a Canadian military doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. The day after seeing his friend die in May 1915, he wrote ‘In Flanders Fields.’ He did not survive the war, but his poem has been memorised and recited through the generations.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
The poppy only became a potent symbol of Remembrance a few years after the end of the war, thanks to the efforts of an American, Moina Belle Michael and a Frenchwoman, Anna Guérin. Moina Michael bought artificial flowers for people to wear on their lapels for Remembrance. Anna Guérin was known as ‘the poppy lady from France.’ She organised a group of French war widows who made silk flowers to sell to raise money for charity. By 1920, the American Legion and other American veterans’ associations adopted the scarlet poppy for Remembrance. They were followed a year later by the Royal British Legion, headed by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.
The first official British Remembrance Day was on 11th November, 1921, though acts of remembrance had been held across the country in preceding years, including the burial of the Unknown Warrior and the dedication of the Cenotaph in London.
I think this final verse could be adapted for current conditions, not as a call to arms in physical battle, but as a cry to use our common sense. There’s little enough of that in some quarters at present.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Hold the faith!
