The significance of the red Flanders poppy. (Papaver rhoeas-(Papveracae)
In the fields of Flanders, during the first World War, scarlet red poppies thrived. The poppies that blanketed the battlefield were a shocking red counterpoint to the bomb scarred, and grotesquely cratered landscape. Science tells us that the poppies thrived because the churned landscape exposed the seeds to light and air, the bombs loosed the clay, and the pulverized limestone in the soil was ideal nutrition. But in reality the fields were just as likely to be covered in bright blue cornflowers as scarlet red poppies. To the English soldier, especially the soldier poet, educated by the English University system and familiar with English romantic, and pastoral, poetic traditions, the scarlet poppy seemed to thrive on the very ground where men had died. It was as if the Flanders poppy derived its very color and life from the blood of fallen soldiers. To the soldiers imagination, the poppy seemed a natural grave marker to commemorate the dead and wounded, the bright red flower was the perfect symbol for loss and sacrifice.
Issac Rosenberg echoed these sentiments in his poem “Break of Day in the Trenches,” where he writes, “Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins.”6 The poppy as an image of commemoration was used by John McCrae a Canadian doctor who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the first battle of Ypres and who wrote a widely popular poem titled “In Flanders Fields.” McCrae’s poem was sent anonymously to the magazine “PUNCH” and published on December 8, 1915. The poem was picked up and adopted by the soldiers on the Western front.
The Great War and Modern Memory” by Paul Fussell Pg.250 1975 Oxford publishing
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 Flandres fields.
An American woman named Moina Michaels was inspired by McCrae’s poem and wrote a response to it . Her poem was entitled “We Shall Keep The Faith.” In it she wrote:
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 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 field.
In addition to writing poetry, Ms. Michaels was a secretary of the American chapter of the YMCA. While attending a meeting of YMCA, national secretaries held after the Armistice in Paris, November of 1918, Ms. Michaels spoke of McCrae’s poem. The secretary from the French chapter of the YMCA, Madame Guerin was so inspired that she approached the other relief organizations of the Allied nations to sell poppies to raise money for war relief. The money collected by the sale of poppies was to be used to aid widows, orphans, and destitute veterans, and their families. A tradition of raising money by veterans groups for charities, and the benefit of needy soldiers, veterans and their families was born.
The British Legion was formed in 1919, and adopted the Flanders poppy as the official symbol of remembrance that same year. While in Australia in 1921, the“Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League,” the forerunner of today’s RSL also adopted the Flanders poppy as it’s official symbol of remembrance.