In Flanders'’ Fields
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.
During The Great War, World War I, on the fields of Northern France and Southwest Belgium, in the regions known as Picardy and Flanders,
some of the bloodiest and most devastating battles took place.
The Ypres River Valley and salient at Flanders was a key area through which German troops headed to Calais. The British, determined to keep the Germans at bay,
holed up in the valley, exposing themselves and their adversary on 3 of 4 flanks. The resulting combat losses were staggering.
The countryside was turned to rubble... homes, shops, entire villages laid to waste... with only the soil, enriched by the lime rubble left.
It was in this fractured earth that red poppies were seen to bloom. Their seedlings lying dormant, the turned soil allowed the poppies to spontaneously grow and flourish...
on hills, across fields, on the graves on the battlefield dead.
Mother Nature was honoring the fallen by dressing their graves in gentle mounds of scarlet.
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Though Poppies Grow In Flanders' Fields... Colonel John McCrae, a Professor of Medicine at McGill University in Canada before WW I, first described the red poppy, the Flanders' poppy, as the flower of remembrance. It was spring, and with spring comes renewal and growth. As he sat in his field hospital dressing area, where wounded had their injuries 'dressed', he looked out over the Flanders Fields and saw the neverending sea of red blooms covering a sea of graves. It was this sight that inspired him to write "In Flanders' Fields". Arguably the most memorable war poem of its era, In Flanders' Fields is a lasting legacy of the haunting battle he witnesssed at Ypres on 3 of May, 1915. McCrae ultimately was dissatisfied with the poem and threw it out. The poem was rescued from the trash by some of his men and submitted to newspapers in England, refused, and finally published by Punch Magazine. Colonel McCrae was wounded in May 1918 and was taken to hospital on the coast of France. On the third evening of his convalescence, he was wheeled to the balcony of his room to look over the sea towards the White Cliffs of Dover. The haunting lines of his peom clearly were ever present when he told his doctor, "Tell them, if ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep." A few hours later Colonel McCrae died of pneumonia, a common occurance for recuperating injured soldiers. |
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Keeping the Faith... In 1918, an American volunteer from Georgia named Moina Michael, read McCrae's poem two days before the Armistice and was inspired to write one of her own. The poem, "We Shall Keep the Faith" was written as an answer to the lament of the fallen soldier who speaks out in McCrae's "In Flanders Fields". As a show of keeping the faith, Miss Michael began wearing a red poppy at all times. On 9 November, 1918, while hosting a meeting of foreign wartime secretaries at the YMCA at Columbia University in NYC, she was offered a donation on behalf of all the secretaries, for her great hospitality. Upon presentation, she announced that with it she would purchase poppies and told them the story of McCrae and his poem In Flanders Fields and how it had inspired her. |
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 kept
The faith with those who died.
We cherish, too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valour 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.
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Over There...
Madame E. Guérin, of Provence, France, visited America in 1920. At the YMCA, she came across Miss Michael, heard her story and decided that upon her return to France, she would sell handmade Flanders Poppies as a relief project for war orphans and poor children. Thus the red poppy worn to keep faith and in remembrance of the War Dead began in Europe. In 1921, British Field Marshall Earl Haig, former Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France and Belgium, was so impressed by Madame Guérin's project that he authorized the British Legion to begin a British Poppy Day Appeal, the proceeds going to disabled and destitute veterans of the Great War. In the United Kingdom, it is known as the Emblem of Remembrance. The day selected to so honor the fallen was 11 November... the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Australia passed resolutions that the Poppy of Flanders' Fields be recognized as the internarional memorial flower to be worn on the anniversary of Armistice Day. As the League wrote, "The little silk poppies which are to be worn on Armistice Day are an exact replica in size and colour of the Poppies that bloom in Flanders' Fields. These poppies have been made by the war orphans in the devastated regions of France and have been shipped to Australia this year for Armistice Day." One million poppies, made by French orphans, widows and disabled veterans, were sent to Autralia for the first Armistice Day remembrance, 11 November, 1921. At the same time, Madame Guérin traveled to Canada, home of Colornel McCrae, the author of the original poem. She met with the Great War Veterans Association of Canada and convinced them to adopt the poppy as a national symbol of remembrance and to assist in fundraising for orphans and disabled veterans. In America... In the United States, it was already the tradition to honor our War Dead on Decoration Day. Begun by what appears to be the ladies of the Confederacy who decorated the graves of their husbands, sons and fathers, and can be found in reference as early as 1867. On 5 May, 1868, General John A. Logan, National Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, so taken by this phenomeena, issued General Order No. 11, officially proclaiming the 30th of May a day when the graves of the War Dead were to be strewn with flowers, part of which reads: "Let us, then, at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the Nation's gratitude,--the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan." At the end of the Great War Era, the VFW, during their 1923 encampment, decided that the Red Poppies in America should be assembled by American disabled and needy veterans. By making the poppies, the veterans would be provided with some form of assistance that was not simply charity, but earned. The next year, disabled veterans at the Buddy Poppy factory in Pittsburgh, assembled VFW Buddy Poppies. The designation "Buddy Poppy" was adopted at that time. |
Each Remembrance Day the British Legion lays a poppy wreath on the grave of Colonel John McCrae |
McCrae never lived long enough to see his poem blossom into a global sign of remembrance and mourning. The poppies that bloomed wild and spontaneously across the Fields of Flanders, spread across borders, oceans and continets. The simple blooms he saw that spring day, long after the fallen had been buried and their graves reclaimed by the serendipitous forces of nature, would not only inspire him to take pen to paper, but would inspire countless generations to keep faith with the fallen with an even simpler gesture. |
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AII POW-MIA
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