Why A Poppy to Symbolise Remembrance?
The familiar red poppy has become a symbol of self-sacrifice and duty to country As such it is recognised and acknowledged across the world. In becoming such a potent symbol it has also forever become linked in our collective conscious (conscience?) with the horrific carnage, and staggering casualty lists of the First World War. Increasingly however, few people alive today may be aware that the symbolism of the red poppy was originally more connected to the symbolism of rebirth and renewal of hope following that terrible conflict.
Following the cessation of hostilities in the winter of 1918, the poppy was the first wild flower to re-establish itself in the lime poisoned soils of the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. The linking with hope and renewal was firmly placed in the collective psyche of the day by the May 1915 poem of a Canadian doctor John McCrae who wrote one of the most famous (and populist) poems of the Great War 'In Flanders Field' which was written at the height of the bloody battle of Ypres. The poem runs:
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.
The idea of selling poppies as a mark of remembrance to those lost in the Great War appears to have originated in the United States, very soon after the end of the war itself and has been credited to one Moina Michael (a lady from the state of Georgia in the USA). The idea seems to have been readily picked up and soon spread to western europe, where it may have originally been intended to use to raise monies for children who had been directly affected by the war.
However, in the UK (or Great Britain as it was then more commonly known) the idea was championed by an ex-senior British Commander on the Western Front - Field Marshall Douglas Haig (who became a key figure in the founding of the Royal British Legion, an association created to assist ex-service personnel and their beneficiaries). Haig though was not the only influential figure who was keen on the symbolism of the poppy, and others both in Canada and the Commonwealth picked up on the idea too.
From these early beginnings the symbolism and associations conjured by the poppy have continued to grow and become reinforced with each new generation, and it remains one of the most powerful and iconic representations recognisable worldwide.
For The Fallen
If the poppy remains the visual representation of remembrance, then the accompanying literary 'image' must surely be Laurence Binyon's poem For The Fallen. First published in The Times in September 1914, the poem has since come to represent what has been repeatedly described as "the lost generation" of the First World War.
Binyon himself went to the front in 1916 and served there with the Red Cross. It would not appear to be recorded whether Binyon felt the same way about the work after witnessing the carnage of the Western Front at close hand for himself.
It is the fourth stanza of the poem which like the poppy has become irrevocably linked to Remembrance Day, and is still quoted at services held across the globe.
For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Laurence Binyon (1869-1943),
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