Poppies for Remembrance

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.

     Canadian Lt. Col. John McCrae wrote this poem early in World War I, before the disillusionment that came as the years dragged on. The poem so inspired Moina Michael of the American Young Women's Christian Association that she wrote a poem of her own.

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 deis,

But lends a lustre 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.

     Moina wore a red silk poppy pinned to her coat at a YWCA Overseas War Secretaries' Conference in November, 1918, and gave out twenty-five more. She sought to have the poppy adopted as a national symbol of remembrance.

     The National American Legion did adopt the poppy as their official symbol of remembrance at a 1920 conference. Attending was a French woman, Anna Guérin, who began selling artificial poppies. She sent her sellers to London in 1921, where the poppy was adopted by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, a founder of the Royal British Legion.

     Beginning last August, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red is on display at the Tower of London, marking one hundred years since Britain's involvement began in World War I. Ceramic poppies have been progressively filling the Tower's moat. It ends on Remembrance Day, next Tuesday, November 11, the date the armistice ended the war in 1918. Each of the 888,246 ceramic poppies represents a British military fatality in the war. Afterwards, the poppies will be sold for £25 and will benefit charities.

     Have you ever wondered why service organizations sell poppies at stores' entrances on Veteran's Day?