youtube - FOR THE FALLEN

Flanders and Picardy, in northern France and Belgium, saw some of the most concentrated fighting of the First World War.

There was complete devastation. Buildings, roads, trees and natural life simply disappeared. Where once there were homes and farms there was now a sea of mud. But still the Poppy flowered every year with the coming of the warm weather and brought life, hope, colour and reassurance to an otherwise devastated place.

John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, was so deeply moved by what he saw in northern France that, in 1915, in his pocket book, he scribbled the following verses:


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.  

McCrae's poem was eventually published in Punch and civilians around the world began to realise the full horror of the war in France and in the trenches.

McCrae died in 1918 in a military hospital on the French Channel coast. Shortly before he died he is said to have murmured:


Tell them this; if ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep.

In 1918, on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, the First World War ended. Thousands had died; thousands more had been injured and scarred by their experiences. The men and women who had survived returned to their homes. For them, though, the world would never be the same.

Moina Michael, an American War Secretary with the YMCA and a writer, was moved by McCrae's work and she wrote:

 

The Answer

Oh! You who sleep in Flanders' fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew;

We caught the torch you threw,

And holding high we kept

The faith with those 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 lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders' fields.

And now the torch and Poppy red

Wear in honour of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught:

We've learned the lesson that ye taught

In Flanders' fields.

 
Miss Michael bought red poppies with money that had been given to her by work colleagues and, wearing one of the poppies she had bought, sold the remainder to her friends to raise a small amount of money for Servicemen in need. A French colleague, Madame Guerin, encouraged by what Moina Michael had achieved with the poppy emblem, proposed the making and sale of artificial poppies to help ex-Servicemen and their families. And so the tradition began.

In Britain, Major George Howson, an infantry officer decorated for bravery, was also deeply moved by the plight of ex-Service people who seemed unemployable in peacetime. He formed the Disabled Society to help them.

The British Legion - now The Royal British Legion - was formed in 1921 to give practical help and companionship to ex-Service people and their dependants.

Howson thought the making of artificial poppies might offer opportunities for The Disabled Society and approached the Legion with his suggestions. And so The Royal British Legion poppy factory was established employing many disabled people making poppies, wreaths and other items associated with the poppy appeal.

The first Poppy Day was held in Britain on 11 November 1921 and since then the Poppy Appeal has become a key annual appeal in the nation's calendar.