Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army
McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.
In 1918, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the guns fell silent and World War I ended.
All locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead. King George V
It has been sixty years, the fallen of WW I, and all wars of man since the beginning will not be forgotten.
The history of the red poppy, is but a remebrance for the fallen. In 1918 Scarlet poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century, transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.
In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as the First World War raged through Europe's heart.
The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in the First World War and later conflicts.
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{K:30432} 11/11/2005
