Why a red poppy?

[Wazza]

Ladies and gentlemen I though I'd re-post this item to a thread of its own because I don't think everyone would have read it when I posted it onto a thread created by The Drifter. The time is now almost 11am in Sydney and at 11am we will stop for one minute in silent reference for those who have fallen. This day today has a more sepecial significance for me because to my shame I have selfishly only thought of those brave Australians who lost their lives in harms way. But after "meeting" the members of PatriotFiles From this day forward I WILL remember those brave American boys who also made the supreme sacfifice in the cause of freedom.

The red poppy, the Flanders poppy, was first described as the flower of remembrance by Colonel John McCrae, who was Professor of Medicine at McGill University of Canada before World War One. Colonel McCrae had served as a gunner in the Boer War, but went to France in World War One as a medical officer with the first Canadian contingent.

At the second battle of Ypres in 1915, when in charge of a small first-aid post, he wrote in pencil on a page torn from his dispatch book:


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 verses were apparently sent anonymously to the English magazine, Punch, which published them under the title . "In Flanders' Fields".

Colonel McCrae was wounded in May 1918 and died after three days in a military hospital on the French coast. On the eve of his death he allegedly said to his doctor, "Tell them this. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep".

An American Miss Moira Michael, read "In Flanders' Fields" and wrote a reply entitled "We Shall Keep the Faith":


Oh! You who sleep in Flanders' fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew,
We caught the torch you threw,
And holding high we kept
The faith with those who died,
We cherish, too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valour led.
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders' fields.
And now the torch and poppy red
Wear in honour of our dead
Fear not that ye have died for naught
We've learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders' fields.

Wazza,

I regreat to advise you that ,according to this morning's newspaper,one of your countrymen and his wife were killed during the night when tornadoes moved through the area.Tennessee in general was hit pretty hard-one small town in east Tn. is being discribed as "wipped out" with at least 45 people missing in addition to the known dead and injuried as of this morning-and several people were killed or listed as critically injuried within 20 miles or so of my home, your countryman being one of these.I'm sorry that I don't presently have his name in frount of me and I would not want to trust my memory.I'll get back to you.

[reeb]

Doc and Wazza,

The tornadoes went through my home state of Ohio also but not near my hmy home town.

My deepest thoughts are with you both.

Damn shame!!

God Bless!!!!!!

enough........

[colmurph]

Not to detract from that wonderful poem, but.....the red poppy is a weed that grows in disturbed ground. In Europe, whenever the ground is plowed, red poppys grow. In flanders fields the ground was churned by horrendous artillery barrages that plowed and re-plowed the ground and buried and uncovered the dead. The poppies grew among the dead in the earth that was so torn asunder, just like the lives of those honored dead.

Wazza,

Your countryman's name was Dennis Tooby and his wife's name was Karen.He was a contractor and welder and she was a first-grade teacher in Clarksville which was near their home.I initially had them confused with two other folks that were killed near Manchester.As quoted in the Nashville Tennessean, a close neighbor of theirs who recovered their bodies had this to say of them:"They were super people,wonderful people.They would always stop what they were doing and help you if you needed help."

Wazza, it seems to me that Austrailians and Americans have a habit of dieing together in war and in peace as in this case.Seems appropriate that they be remembered together.

[Wazza]

Colmurph

Apparently poppies grow speedily in many parts of the middle east and south east asia.

Doc,

Once again it is the well respect folk who come of second best. You never hear of one of those blighters going thru death row or or the pedophile section of prisons over there. They build prisons in safe places and not on geo-fault lines.

[Andy]

With typical English black humor, the Tommy's of WWI pronounced Ypers - Wipers, due to the number of men who were wiped from the rolls of the living.
Grandpa, who was in France in WWI could recite that poem at the drop of a hat and usually dropped the hat himself. Don't blame him at all.

Stay healthy,
Andy