The Red Poppy Color

In Flanders Fields
By John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row by row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard among 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 yea break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields


John McCrea
Poppy have always connected man with his surroundings, adding beauty, sensation and meaning to the world around him. Red poppies in particular are well-known, easily identifiable and have been given particular meanings based on their color and use.

The Red Poppy Color

    People have long identified red as a color of sexuality, anger, passion and love. Prolonged exposure to the color has been known to stimulate hunger, anger and raise blood pressure within the human body.
    Long before the Great War, the red poppy had become a symbol of death, renewal and life. The seeds of the flower can remain dormant in the earth for years, but will blossom spectacularly when the soil is churned. Beginning in late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders became the scene of stupendous disturbances. Red Poppys soon appeared.

    In 1915, at a Canadian dressing station north of Ypres on the Essex Farm, an exhausted physician named Lt. Col. John McCrae would take in the view of the poppy strewn Salient and experience a moment of artistic inspiration. The veteran of the South African War was able to distill in a single vision the vitality of the red poppy symbol, his respect for the sacrifice made by his patients and dead comrades, and his intense feeling of obligation to them. McCrae would capture all of this in the most famous single poem of the First World War, In Flanders Fields.
    The doctor's work achieved immediate universal popularity which was subsequently reinforced by his own death in 1918 from pneumonia and meningitis. He was buried in a military cemetery near Calais on the English Channel, thus becoming one with those of whom he wrote in his famous poem. Probably by the time of his internment, John McCrae's verse had forever bound the image of the Red Poppy to the memory of the Great War. The poppy was eventually adopted by the British and Canadian Legions as the symbol of remembrance of World War One and a means of raising funds for disabled veterans. An American war volunteer, Moina Michael, helped establish the symbol in the US where the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion also embraced the Red Poppy tradition.


Happy Veterans Day

This weekend British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and CNBC's Topic A With Tina Brownwearing a small red flower on his lapel. What is this flower, and what does it signify?
It's a poppy, an international symbol of remembrance for veterans of war. Each year, the Royal British Legion, the United Kingdom's most prominent veterans' welfare organization, gives red paper poppies to those who contribute to its annual Poppy Appeal in late October and November. The drive generates almost half of the legion's operating budget each year and culminates on Nov. 11, Remembrance Day (in the United States, Veterans' Day), the anniversary of the World War I armistice. The occasion is celebrated more visibly in the United Kingdom than in the States; this past weekend, for example, two Douglas Dakota DC3 aircraft scattered 3 million poppy petals over London, and the Thames bridges and the London Eye were lit poppy red.
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Why a poppy? The flower was known to grow in World War I battlefields. (The chalky French and Belgian soil, one story goes, was inundated with lime from bombing rubble and sprang forth with the flowers shortly after battles ended.) Inspired by John McCrae's 1915 poem "In Flanders Fields," a New York YMCA volunteer named Moina Michael first proposed the poppy as a symbol of remembrance in 1918. The Royal British Legion adopted the practice in 1921, and this year manufactured 34 million of the paper flowers in its Richmond, Surrey, "Poppy Factory," which is staffed primarily by disabled veterans.
HAVE A HAPPY VETERANS DAY
THANK YOU VETERANS