Do you know why British and Canadians wear poppies on Nov 11?

a shiny new penny to whomever can answer that.

And there is a reason why British and (former) British Empire and Commonwealth nations do it more than people from other countries.

But probably more to it than that.

but why poppies? There is a reason for this.

That is the answer I am seeking. a shiny penny folks

I don't know the answer. But I'll be interested to find out.

Poppies grew in abundance in an area of NW Belgium called Flanders. In Flanders, in the area of an ancient town called Ypres, was some of the heaviest fighting of WWI. There were 3 major battles there, and there was almost constant smaller ones. It was one of the nastiest areas of the western front. The 3rd battle of Ypres, from July-November 1917, also known as the battle of Passenchendaele, was particularly horrific.

Most of the troops on the Allied side committed to the Ypres salient were from the UK itself or British Empire and Commonwealth nations, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Hundreds of thousands died or were maimed or gassed there in some of the most gory warfare in human history

He was heavily wounded and left for dead -- he was found after lying in a field for days.

He survived and lived to be in his 80's.

I was just a kid when he died.

To Grand-dad Bartholemew :beer:

Paul Gross ("Due South") is directing and starring in a movie about it. He is playing a Calgary soldier who fought in that battle. It will be out on Remembrance Day, 2006.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

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.

everyone else loves Ned Flanders!

In Flanders Fields

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

By John McCrae 1919


http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/find_out/guides/uk/remembrance_day/newsid_2438000/2438319.stm

I hate this war! No more war please.


Impeach Bush!

:shrug:

And it's St. Davy's Day that one wears a leek in his hat. I think it falls on March 2nd (or sometime early in March). The reference in Henry V is there to illustrate his connection to the Welsh captain Fluellen and had nothing to do with the battle at Agincourt. St. Davy is the patron saint of Wales.

Just a little trivia I've gathered along the way.

Oh, and yes, I do know the significance of the poppy... I have one on my jacket. I got it from the little old guy with the can in front of the supermarket.

:)

I know that for Americans this will likely be WWII (since the US was involved for longer than in WWI, and lost far more people). But in Canada it was the other way around (we lost about 67,000 soldiers in WWI and 42,000 in WWII). Considering how small our population was in 1914, this had a tremendous impact.

It was even worse in Great Britain. Of the more than 900,000 troops from the Empire who died, more than half were British. In social science terms the war clawed a huge ragged hole out of the male side of the population pyramid. There was a large cohort of young women who lost husbands or sweethearts, and never had families. Demographics researchers aren't supposed to cry when we look at data, but I did. Almost every family in Britain lost at least one person. If you look at British literature, even the genres which are supposed to be escapist, like crime fiction (Sayers and Christie) or fantasy (Tolkien and Lewis) have the Great War all over them. No wonder -- people couldn't get away from it.

Growing up in Canada in the 70s and 80s, I remember that when my folks talked about "the war" as it affected their lives, they meant WWII ... but on Nov 11th, the whole country thought about "The Great War". I still find it shocking to realize that the WWI vets I saw milling around the memorial on that day are almost all dead now -- and the WWII vets who were still relatively young and vigorous 30 years ago are becoming more and more frail. The vets used to stand outside and sell poppies at the malls, etc., but increasingly there are donation boxes because there aren't enough of them left to do this (and they would risk getting pneumonia, at their age).

http://www.legion.ca/asp/docs/rempoppy/allabout_e.asp

I actually didn't see the real living poppy referred to in McRae's poem until I visited Europe (I'd always thought of the huge overblown ones in my folks' garden until then). But real poppies grow in farm fields, in ditches, and in other locations which have been disturbed. I guess this makes them "ruderals", if I remember my plant ecology correctly. Basically they are weeds. But it's hard not to look at a big field of them and think about the earth all churned up by bombs and trenches, and the red flowers looking like blood.

Someone else took a picture of the French landscape:




The lapel-pin poppies are made of flocked (fuzzed) plastic -- the new versions have black centres, as opposed to green. I have bought 2 so far this year and they have both fallen off my coat, so I may have to use an older green one. Mom said that the veterans themselves used to make the poppies (it provided jobs for the disabled ones after they got back) -- those original poppies were more ornate and didn't fall off!


For the Americans -- here's what the Canadian poppy pins look like.




This is the Year of the Veteran, so as part of the lead-up the Mint released a quarter with the poppy emblazoned on it, in colour.



www.downtownstamps.bc.ca/ newsletters/news59.html



McCrae's poem? I memorized it in school -- we were pretty close by to where he used to live. But when I read some of the other stanzas, I realized that he is calling for the other soldiers to continue the war. Not all the wartime poets echoed those words. The poem I always think of when I look at the poppy:


Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens ?
What quaver--what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe--
Just a little white with the dust.


Isaac Rosenberg


http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Break.html


Canada didn't get a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier until fairly recently. It's not off in a remote site, but in the middle of Ottawa. People have started a new tradition after the services are over, on Nov 11th -- they leave their poppy pins on the tomb. I don't think this was part of the ceremony -- they just started to do it. (Picture at link below.)


http://www.worldisround.com/articles/75602/photo11.html

There was a rumour that they'd misprinted it, but apparently the author wrote more than one version of the poem, and the one on the bill isn't the one used in some textbooks!

the poppies GROW,
rathe than
the poppies blow.

I've never seen GROW in print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C$
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_dollar

As you noted, the original wording by McCrae used "blow", not "grow" in the first line, so that's the one used in official ceremonies. "Grow" does occur later in the poem, so people may be mixing it up because of that (I remember a mimeographed handout in elementary school which had to be corrected, after several of my classmates' parents pointed that out). And because of the Sousa version, set to music (also used at some ceremonies).

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/ww1-music/flandersfield.htm

Armistice Day (I still think of it as that, thanks to my dad) always makes me think of the first world war, not the second.

It blows my mind when I think about things like that. 90% of French families lost at least one male member during WWI. That's got to be devastating psychologically. It was definitely bad demographically.

Geez, figure it out...

They merely adopted a defensive posture over the next twenty years because of two reasons. Firstly, they couldn't afford to lose yet another generation of young men in a war of attrition. Secondly, that generation just wasn't there to lose.

When you think about it, most of the men who fought in WWII were born between 1918 and 1925. But in France, many of the men who would have fathered that generation were killed during or just prior to their prime years to become fathers. By 1939, France had a major deficit of young males compared to other European countries. In preparation for this, they had decided upon a defensive strategy to minimize their losses in any future war. Hence the Maginot line, which was essentially the mother of all fortifications. Again, France ran into a problem: they didn't have the money to extend it along the Belgian border and prevent a replay of the Schliffen plan that had nearly doomed them during the autumn of 1914. In addition, they decided to conserve funds by not building along the Ardennes forest, based upon the miscalculation that German armored forces would be unable to operate amidst the dense trees. They were wrong.

For those who poke fun at French "cowardice", remember this; in the end, the Maginot line was not defeated, but flanked. France's defeat lay not in military failures, but in lack of funds and a demographic crisis which stemmed from their horrible losses in WWI. In places the Line *was* attacked, it performed very well. In addition, Italian forces who attacked against the "Little Maginot Line" along the French-Italian border were repulsed, despite having the overwhelming numerical advantage (I believe it was 54 Italian divisions to 6 French, but don't quote me on that). Oh, and the French were so cowardly that they lost 100,000 soldiers in six weeks of battle during June and July 1940. Another thing to keep in mind is that the British Expeditionary Force on the continent faired no better than the French or Belgian armies. If not for the miracle of Dunkirk, Britain might have been forced to sue for peace. Even so, the British and Commonwealth armies teetered on the brink of collapse. Had the Germans been able to gain air superiority over Britain that summer and fall, they would likely have succeeded in an invasion of the British isles. All that saved Britain were just over 1000 aircraft, their crews, and the 23 miles of water dividing Dover from Calais. Scary.

If people want to deride France, the Vichy regime and its collaborators are much better fodder. But that's another story entirely.

Today we throw around the words "cannon fodder" fairly casually, but the devastation of World War I is still something I can barely take in.

My grandfather served in the U.S. Army in France and was one of the fortunate ones and came back to marry his sweetheart. Later he sent his own younger son off to the Pacific during World War II -- my father, who also came back.

My Irish neighbor in Germany used to sing the following song. I think it's meant to be more angry than sentimental, and I post it in that spirit.

THE GREEN FIELDS OF FRANCE (WILLIE MC BRIDE) ...by Eric Bogel

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side
And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun
I've been working all day and I'm nearly done
I see by your grave stone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or, young Willie McBride, was is slow and obscene?

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
And did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame
In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There's a warm summer breeze it makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no mans land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To mans blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars
Well, the sorrows, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.

:)

I think the LOTR was all about the price you pay for winning the good fight. When the book was first published the press were saying it was about WWII .I believe it was all about his own experiences in the battle of the Somme in WWI. In his books his best friends never die and come into their just rewards for services rendered.

FYI
Back then whole battalions were comprised of men from the same town, that had enlisted together and serve together and died together. Friends and brothers died side by side, and towns lost all their young men in the same battle.
In real life his two best friends die in the battle for the Somme. Tolkien survives the battle but is stricken by a chronic life long illness just like Frodo ,and they both are never the same afterwards . Tolkien was sent to the Western Front and fought in the Somme offensive. Most of his closest friends were killed. After four months in and out of the trenches, he contracted a typhus-like infection and was sent back to England, where he served for the rest of the war.

Marshes
The Journey through the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings looks like a description
of the marshy and swampy battlefield in Flanders. In the course of the war the
surroundings of the city of Ypres were transformed into a deadly mud swamp with
slithery clay and shell holes filled with water. Countless soldiers drowned in these
treacherous pits.
http://www.lordoftherings.4mg.com/battlesomme.htm



Battle of the Somme

It was a baptism of fire for Britain's new volunteer armies. Many 'Pals' Battalions, comprising of men from the same town, had enlisted together to serve together. They suffered catastrophic losses: whole units died together and for weeks after the initial assault, local newspapers would be filled with lists of dead, wounded and missing.

It is claimed that the Battle of the Somme destroyed the old German Army by killing off its best officers and men. It killed off far more of our best and of the French best. The Battle of the Somme was fought by the volunteer armies raised in 1914 and 1915. These contained the choicest and best of our young manhood. The officers came mainly from our public schools and universities. Over 400,000 of our men fell in this bullheaded fight and the slaughter amongst our young officers was appalling. The "Official History of the War", writing of the first attack, says:
"For the disastrous loss of the finest manhood of the United Kingdom and Ireland there was only a small gain of ground to show...."

The attack was preceded by an eight-day preliminary bombardment of the German lines, beginning on Saturday 24 June.
The expectation was that the ferocity of the bombardment would entirely destroy all forward German defences, enabling the attacking British troops to practically walk across No Man’s Land and take possession of the German front lines from the battered and dazed German troops. 1,500 British guns, together with a similar number of French guns, were employed in the bombardment.
However, the bombardment failed to destroy either the barbed-wire or the concrete bunkers protecting the German soldiers. This meant that the Germans were able to exploit their good defensive positions on higher ground when the British and French troops attacked at 7.30 on the morning of the 1st July.
The German trenches were heavily fortified and, furthermore, many of the British shells failed to explode. When the bombardment began, the Germans simply moved underground and waited.
The British troops were for the most part forced back into their trenches by the effectiveness of the German machine gun response.
Many troops were killed or wounded the moment they stepped out of the front lines into No Man's Land. Many men walked slowly towards the German lines, laden down with supplies, expecting little or no opposition. They made for incredulously easy targets for the German machine-gunners.

www.firstworldwar.com/battles/somme.htm
Casualties
British casualties on the first day were 20,000 dead and more than 35,000 wounded – ‘probably more than any army in any war on a single day’. The British soldiers at the Somme were not conscripts – they were volunteers, who had flocked to join up in response to Kitchener’s ‘Your country needs you’ poster. In the First World War, men from the same town served together in the same regiment; now they were killed together. Friends and brothers died side by side, and towns lost all their young men in the same battle.

Redstone

If we had the same casualty rate today in Iraq as a proportion of our current population as the British did on the first day of the Somme, we would be losing close to a quarter million men a day.

The horrors of the War To End All Wars were too soon forgotten after WWII. It was the first truly industrialized war, and men were sent wholesale to their deaths for meaningless stretches of territory that changed hands many times during the conflict, to no great advantage to either side.

Americans tend to think that they won the war for the Allies, as both sides were nearing exhaustion in both men and materiel, but the Empire bore the brutal brunt of casualties.

Recently finished a good book on the subject of the British soldier on the Western Front, "Tommy" by Richard Holmes. Very good read. How any soldier survived that piece of hell on earth and retained their sanity I'll never know.

In WWI, he was what was known as a "boy soldier". He had been orphaned and he and his siblings were farmed out to various relatives. His aunt enlisted him in the army when Granddad was 14; soon after WWI started. He was in the calvary; a member of the "Old Contemptibles".
http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/oldcontemptibles.htm
"The Old Contemptibles
Updated - Saturday, 12 July, 2003

The name self-adopted by British troops belonging to the regular army in 1914, the term was supposedly derived from a comment made by the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II.

The Kaiser, upon hearing that German forces were being held up in France while en route to the French capital, is said to have exclaimed his exasperation of "Sir John French's contemptible little army"."

Some of the stories he told me were horrific, to say the least. Here is a picture of my granddad in his prime:

Before he died, the Queen Mother (who was the commander in chief of the regiment) invited all the veterans (there weren't that many left by that time) to come to England all paid. I have a picture of my granddad meeting her; it was a huge highlight in his life. I am so glad he got to do that.

He joined on his 17th birthday and was present for Vimy, Passendaele, and Hill 70, Canal du Nord and The Hundred Days.

He was injured twice, and had amazing stories. He didn't speak of the horror until Alzheimer's began to take him. That was when I learned what it feels like to have your bayonet penetrate someone's body and feel their life ebb out on the end of your rifle.

My grandfather took that first man's belt, as a souvenir? as a trophy?

I still have it.

He spoke of the breakthrough, of being part of the Canadian Corp, the shock troops of the Western Front, whose presence was kept secret because it would signal to the Germans that an attack was imminent on that particular piece of hell.

He spoke of the mud, and coming out of the mud, through the German lines, the war becoming a war of movement again, rather than a war of position.

His memory was of mile upon mile of fields of cabbages, planted by the Germans to provide sauerkraut.

I have his military records. He caught a case of the clap from a German prostitute on Christmas leave 1918.

I know why we wear poppies. I remeber that we used to have school assemblies on Novemeber 11. In addition to "In Flander's Fields" they always included:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

He spoke, once, of riding (he was in the calvary) for so long, over the mud and corpses, that when they finally stopped and took the saddles off the horses, the skin came off the backs of the horses. So, he and the others had to shoot all their horses (to put them out of their misery). When he spoke of this, after 70 years, there were still tears in his eyes. And that was the least horrific story he would tell us. I don't even want to imagine the ones he wouldn't tell us. Don't even want to mention the stories my dad and mum have from their wars. (WWII, India Revolution, Korea).

Barbarians!

and they probably have jillions of dead soldiers buried there