Month of November Birth of the Poppy

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them” – (Laurence Binyon)

With the dawn of November some may see that a bright red colour Poppy being worn to remember the fallen also for the support of Armed Forces community. Why its November? On the day of 11th November 1918 Armistice was signed at Le Francport between the Allied and Central powers to officially end the Great War which caused death of 09 million military personnel. ?

The war also named as the “Trench War” quintessentially, adversaries are engaged in trench warfare especially in the “Western Front” where the land was savaged by artillery, bomb shells and munition. Magnificently picturesque European landscape tuned into debris, mud, ashes and barren encompassed with misery; but the Flanders Poppies bloomed and flourished despite repeated obliteration in the bloody “Western Front” making an exception. ??

Blooming of Poppies gave the inspiration to Lieutenant Colonel “John McCrae” ?Canadian Medical army Corps, to pen his thoughts in the poem “In Flanders Fields” (1915).?

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae

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.?

It is the credit to the “Moina Belle Michael” American professor and humanitarian who inspired by the poem adopt the “Poppy in Memory” of those who had fallen in the war and as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in the war (1921). ????????

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