spiker's blog: "War"

The Poppy

The red field or corn poppy is an annual plant that, preceding the First World War, grew in fairly modest numbers on the edges of grain fields all across Europe.  It was considered by many to be an insignificant weed of little importance.  Each bloom produces many tiny black seeds which are widely dispersed by the wind.  The seeds are remarkably resilient and can survive for many years.

The custom of wearing a poppy to honour the dead stems from a curious regular occurrence on the fields of battle in Flanders and France during the First World War.

That war produced destruction at such a level as the world had never seen.  Modern automatic weapons and particularly artillery shells leveled towns and villages and tore up fields and wooded areas into twisted, grotesque scenes of murdered nature.  Often the wet weather conspired to form vast fields of mud pummeled into a liquid ooze that many soldiers simply fell into and drowned in.  It is difficult to imagine how anything could have survived the utter butchery.

However, starting in the Spring of 1915 and throughout the war years, warm weather and sunshine brought a remarkable transformation on these fields of battle.  Millions of red poppies emerged from the carnage as seeds that had lain dormant for many years germinated in the disturbed soil.  Battle after bloody battle produced clumps and carpets of these vibrant red flowers - nature’s testament to the blood spilled on those fields. 

In May of 1915, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a surgeon serving with the Canadian Medical Corps wrote the famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ following the death of a close friend in the Battle of Ypres.  The poem was published in Punch magazine in December of that year and quickly became one of the most popular poems of the war.  It’s in another one of my ‘war’ blogs.  The poem was also extensively printed in the United States.

McCrae died from pneumonia on 28 January 1918 whilst still commanding a Canadian Medical Corps hospital at Boulogne.  He was buried the following day at Wimereux Cemetery with full military honours.  Soon after his death Moina Michael, an American lady working at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries headquarters was moved by the poem to “keep the faith” with the dead and vowed to always wear a red poppy as a sign of remembrance.  In the following years, she campaigned to have the poppy taken up as a national emblem but it was never really taken up by any group until the American Legion adopted the emblem in 1920, but seemingly without the impetus to make it widely popular today.  The Royal British Legion and the Royal Canadian Legion adopted it the following year.

In addition to wearing the poppy as a remembrance to the dead of the two World Wars, today Canadians and members of the British Commonwealth also wear it as a symbol to remember the dead in all conflicts including those that continue today.

I also wear mine in memory of my father who passed away on the day before Remembrance Day, 28 years ago.  At the time of his death I was a young officer in the Canadian Forces serving far from home and scheduled to be on a Remembrance Day Parade  and then on a flight home to visit my ailing father.  He died the day before and so, in my mind, I dedicated the parade to his honour and then caught the flight home to bury my Dad.  Since then Remembrance Day has a double significance to me.