High Streets everywhere will blossom with red poppies this month: everyone from toddlers in prams to grannies will be wearing one. By Remembrance Day more than 33 million are expected to be sold around the country by an army of many thousands of volunteers. The money raised will help our ex-Service people and their dependants through the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal.
The story behind the Poppy Appeal:
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the First World War ended. Civilians wanted to remember the people who had given their lives for peace and freedom. An American War Secretary, Moina Michael, inspired by John McCrae’s poem, began selling poppies to friends to raise money for the ex-Service community. And so the tradition began.
The Poppy Poem
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
John McCrae
Remembrance Sunday