The poppy, symbol of the First World War

The poppy flower is a symbol of the First World War in the United Kingdom, but also in many other countries , because they bloomed frequently on the battlefields in Flanders.

Particularly famous is a poem by John McCrae (1872-1918) about poppies on the Western Front: In Flanders Fields. The Canadian army doctor wrote his poem on December 8, 1915, when he saw large poppies blooming on war graves. McCrae threw away the paper he wrote the poem on, but a fellow officer found it and sent the poem to several London magazines. It was first published in the popular Punch magazine . Many readers were touched by the poem. The text of In Flanders Fields goes like this:

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.
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.
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.

John McCrae did not survive World War I. The army doctor died on January 28, 1918 of pneumonia and meningitis. He was 45 years old.

Commemorations

The poppy can be found during most commemorations of the First World War. Remembrance Day (or Poppy Day) is observed in the United Kingdom on November 11, the day World War I ended in 1918 . This day commemorates the fallen of the First World War, as well as soldiers who died in armed conflicts afterwards.

The idea to make the poppy a symbol of the First World War came from the American poet and humanist Moina Michael (1869-1944). The day before the end of the war, she wrote the poem We Shall Keep the Faith, inspired by John McCrae’s poem, in which she declared that from then on she would always wear a poppy to commemorate the victims of the war. Her symbolic act was imitated throughout the British Commonwealth. Michael’s poem goes like this:

We Shall Keep the Faith
Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a luster to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

Veterans

The poppy has also been the symbol of the British veterans’ organization, the Royal British Legion , since 1922 . Every year, the organization sells plastic poppies that are worn on clothing by many Britons in the weeks before Remembrance Day, in memory of the fallen. Proceeds go to support veterans or their next of kin.

Also in Australia many people pin plastic poppies on the lapel, during Remembrance Day and Anzac Day. Sometimes they are also decorated there with sprigs of rosemary, following a sentence from Shakespeare ‘s play Hamlet:

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray you love remember”