Wearing our poppies with pride: ninety years of Remembrance

  • Published
  • By Suzanne Harper
  • ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  At the eleventh hour on  Nov. 11, 2008, we will mark ninety years since the end of The Great War. In the U.S. you call it Veterans' Day. In the U.K., we know  Nov.11 as Remembrance Day or Poppy Day.
 
Beginning in 1939, at the start of World War Two, the two-minute silence was moved to the Sunday nearest  Nov. 11 in order not to interfere with wartime production should it fall on a weekday. Since the 1990s, a growing number of people have observed a two-minute silence on  Nov. 11 itself, resulting in both that day and  Remembrance Sunday being commemorated formally in the U.K. 

The wearing of poppies is a proud tradition in the U.K. and if you watch British television you will notice that, from the last week of October until Nov.11, all presenters and politicians wear the poppy as a mark of respect for those who have fought on behalf of our nation. The Royal British Legion, who run the Poppy Appeal, is a charitable organisation which provides financial, social and emotional support to millions who have served and are currently serving in the Armed Forces, and their dependants. 

The first official Legion Poppy Day was held in Britain on  Nov. 11, 1921, inspired by the poem 'In Flanders' Fields' written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces , who tended the wounded and dying on the battlefields of Flanders. Some of the bloodiest fighting of World War One took place in the Flanders and Picardy regions of Belgium and Northern France. The poppy was the only thing which grew in the aftermath of the complete devastation. The poem was written upon a scrap of paper upon the back of Colonel Lawrence Cosgrave in the trenches during a lull in the bombings on May 3, 1915, after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before.

          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. 

Civilians wanted to remember the people who had given their lives for peace and freedom. An American war secretary, Moina Michael, touched by McCrae's poem, began selling artificial poppies to friends to raise money for the ex-Service community. The idea spread to Great Britain and caught the interest of the Royal British Legion. Since then, the Poppy Appeal has been a key annual event in the nation's calendar. 

Today the artificial poppies are made at the Poppy Factory in Richmond, Surrey, and Remembrance Sunday is the culmination of a year's effort to make 38 million Remembrance poppies, 5 million Remembrance petals, 900,000 crosses and 100,000 wreaths. A team of 50 people - most of them disabled and ex-Servicemen and women - work all year round. They also make wreaths laid by Her Majesty the Queen and other members of the Royal Family.

Annually on the Saturday preceding Remembrance Sunday, London's Royal Albert Hall hosts the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance. The Festival of Remembrance is a solemn, thought-provoking event. 

A particularly poignant moment is always the observance of the two-minute silence and the releasing of a million red poppies over the audience. 

Growing up with a father in the Royal Air Force, I have been aware of the significance of the Remembrance poppy from an early age. I knew my grandfather had returned from The Great War but it wasn't until my brother took it upon himself to research some family history that I learned that by April 1917, twenty-eight year old Charles Patrick, my grandfather, had been gassed and taken a prisoner by the Germans and his brother, my great uncle, twenty-six year old Felix Patrick, lay in a field grave beyond the French city of Arras. 

Charles returned to his home village in Suffolk, scarred both physically and mentally. Until a couple of years ago, when details of war graves became available on the internet, we didn't know where Felix's grave was located. My brother travelled to France and visited Felix's grave on the 90th anniversary of his death, Apr. 12 1917, and my brother Michael wrote to me, "He lies, a village boy, in a beautiful cemetery surrounded by arable fields." 

Felix was fighting in the Battle of Arras which opened with Easter snow in 1917. The daily casualty rate was 4076, twice that of the 1916 Somme battles. By April 1917, Felix Patrick was a sergeant in the Worcester Regiment. His battalion's task was to support an attack on the pretty French village beyond the Cambrai Road called Monchy-le-Preux. 

Felix was wounded early in the battle and was evacuated to a field hospital some distance away, west of Arras, by a village called Duisans. Felix died and his grave can be found at Duisans today. Two thirds of the men who died in Felix's battalion have no known grave.

My sister-in-law has also discovered that a relative, Walter Whiston, is buried only  three miles east of Felix's grave. Walter was born in Leicester in 1899. In 1912 he migrated with his family to Canada. In May 1917 he joined the Canadian Mounted Rifles in Toronto.

In 1918, the Germans had made a huge attack which broke through the Allied lines. The gains of 1917, when Felix died, were lost. After the attack had been absorbed, the Allies, including the Canadians and Americans, went back on the offensive. Walter Whiston died on Aug. 27,1918. He is buried at Haucourt Cemetery, East of Arras, by the Cambrai road.

Felix and Walter have been found and I am so glad that my brother and his wife were able to visit their graves and pay tribute to them.

So many have no grave to mark their final resting place but we must never forget their sacrifice and our debt to them.

In the words of Lt. Col. John McCrae:

          "We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
            Loved and were loved, and now we lie
            In Flanders fields."

I wear my poppy with great, great pride.