Memorial Day Poppies

Courtesy Google.com

Growing up in Alaska, I remember making poppy posters every May in school for a Memorial Day contest. My mother had won the all-school prize in the contest when she was in the same grade school, and I wanted to do the same. I never won the big prize, although I often won the class prize.

I knew the purpose of the poppies were to remind us of soldiers who had died in wars, but I didn't know how poppies came to symbolize the fallen, so I did some research.

Poppies have been grown for centuries for their brilliant flowers and as medicinal herbs, but they are technically classified as weeds because of their tenacious quality. Their seeds lie in the ground and spring to life when the soil is disturbed.

From 1914 to 1918, the Great War, now known as World War I, ravaged the landscape across Western Europe, where most of the fiercest fighting took place. Some 8.5 million soldiers died of battlefield injuries or disease. 

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae served as a Canadian brigade surgeon for an Allied artillery unit in northern France and Belgium (then known as Flanders), where the Battle of Ypres tore up the fields and forests, wreaking havoc on the plants, trees, and soil. About 37,000 Allied soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing in the battle, as well as 37,000 on the German side. A good friend of McCrae's was slain. 

Early the following spring, 1915, McCrae noticed bright red blooms springing up from the battle-scarred ground. Struck by the sight of the poppies, he wrote a poem, "In Flanders Fields," in which he channels the voice of the fallen soldiers buried under those hardy flowers:

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.

Flanders Fields Cemetery Courtesy Google.com
Interestingly, the lime content in Flanders Fields was so increased by the battle that today only poppies flourish there.

Published in Punch magazine in late 1915, the poem soon became one of the most famous to emerge from the Great War. Even though McCrae himself died in January 1918 from pneumonia and meningitis, his poem's fame spread to America, where it inspired Moina Michael, a professor at the University of Georgia, to write her own poem in response, which she titled, "We Shall Keep Faith." In it, she accepts the challenge, saying, "We caught the torch you threw/And holding high, we keep the Faith/With All who died."

Michael vowed to always wear a red poppy as a remembrance of the sacrifices made in Flanders fields. She bought red fabric and made a batch of poppies for herself and her colleagues to wear. After the war, Michael taught a class of disabled veterans and realized they needed financial and occupational support. She came up with the idea of making and selling red poppies to raise money to support returning veterans.

Eventually, Moina convinced the Georgia branch of the American Legion Auxiliary, a veteran's group, to adopt the poppy as its symbol. Soon, the National American Legion voted to make the poppy its official national emblem.

While other countries wear the red poppies on November 11, Veteran's Day, which honors all living veterans, Americans wear the symbolic red flower on Memorial Day to commemorate the sacrifice of the many men and women who have given their lives fighting for their country in all our wars.

And thank you, Jesus, for laying down your life for our sins!