Veterans an ocean apart wear red poppies, the story behind it.

In the United States you see red poppies worn around Memorial Day, in the United Kingdom and Canada, it’s on Remembrance Day, November 11th.

It started with the Death of a soldier

The story behind the red poppies starts in the trenches of Word War One, in the Second Battle of Ypres, with a Canadian field surgeon of Scottish descent in the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major John McCrae. After seeing much death around him already, on the 2nd of May, 1915, one death affected him most. A friend and former medical student, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by an artillery shell. He was buried later that day, and in the absence of a chaplain Major McRae conducted the ceremony himself.

The poppies

Poppies were never abundant in Flanders. Their numbers at the time, the splash of red they painted across the ground, was a direct product of the war. To the poppy, species ‘Papaver Rhoeas’, the soil of Flanders was chalky, and not very conducive to the propagation of the species. Artillery shells changed that. With the massive barrage of artillery shells came the addition of nitrates. Gunpowder is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate. The shells hitting the ground turned it over and allowed the nitrates to penetrate the soil, providing the perfect medium for the poppies to thrive in, and spread like a blood-red blanket across the land. Major McRae took note of this blanket of red, as he sat looking at the cemetery where his friend now lay buried.

The poem

The next day, on the 3rd of May, 1915, as Major McRae sat on the back of an ambulance overlooking the cemetery splashed with red he wrote one of the most memorable war poems written, “In Flanders Fields”, below.


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.


The poem spurs a symbol

John McRae did not live long enough to see the end of the war. He died as a Lieutenant Colonel on the 28th of January, 1918 in Boulogne, France, still on active duty. The poem, which had been published in England by 'Punch', had found its way to an American woman named Moina Michael, who after reading the poem began wearing a poppy as her way of honoring the war dead. Quickly being picked up by others it was adopted as the symbol of the annual conference of the American Legion in 1920. In that year a French woman by the name of Madame E. Guerin observed the wearing of the poppy and took the custom back to France where she sold hand-made poppies to ease the suffering of the children from countries the war had ravaged. Seeing the poppy sales make progress, it was adopted in Canada in 1921. Shortly before Memorial Day the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) became the first veterans’ organization to sell the poppies.

Remembrance Day / Memorial Day

Now called Remembrance Day by many nations, and Veterans Day in the United States, it was first called Armistice Day. The Armistice was signed ending the First World War on in 1918 at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, (November 11th, at 11am), in a railroad carriage in Compiègne Forest, in Picardie, France. Originally also commemorated as Armistice Day in the United States that was changed by President Dwight Eisenhower on October 8th, 1954 when he made a proclamation to that affect following an Act of Congress (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) that Armistice Day become Veterans Day and expand the day from the remembrance of World War One dead to honor the service of all Veterans, of all wars, alive or dead. This Act of Congress was spured by Veterans Service Organizations after World War Two.

In conclusion

Regardless of when you wear the poppy, for Memorial Day in the United States or for Remembrance/Armistice day elsewhere, the most important thing is that you wear the poppy. Not just to remember those who are honored, but also to remind others to observe their remembrance, lest one day we find that we have raised a generation that has forgetten those who still sleep in Flanders fields.


Jonathan RF Cooke
11 November, 2007

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