Editor’s Note: Phil Strehl, commander of the American Legion Hugh C. Newman Post No. 449, reminds residents that they can support living veterans as well as honor the dead by buying the Legion’s paper poppies. National Poppy Week runs from May 22-29. Paper poppies as a symbol of those who had sacrificed their lives in World War I was inspired by a poem written by Canadian surgeon John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” in which poppies grew around the graves of the newly fallen. Soon after the war ended, and with the poem achieving universal renown among English speakers, poppies began to be distributed in memory of soldiers and by an Act of Congress became the national symbol of sacrifice.
And uneasy quiet fell on the trenches and devastated farmland at Ypres, France, near the border with Belgium.
It was the spring of 1915, and where farmers once planted their fields and tended livestock it was now known as the Western front. It experienced only mud and rows of barbed wire and broken weapons. A haze of gunpowder, mustard and chlorine gas hung over fields of fire.
The lull in the fighting provided both sides of this bitter war time to gather their dead and wounded. Some wounded found their way to field aid stations, as the medical tents were called.
There, a young Canadian surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, labored through the night to save those he could. The dead were moved toward a new burial site nearby. The captain was relieved to take a short break before returning to the bloody tables and do what he could.
While sitting on the back of the wagon that served both as ambulance and hearse, McCrae looked out over the field of freshly dug graves of those who perished in the battle. He noted that all around the new graves small flowers began to grow out of the mud and otherwise barren soil. They were as red in color as the blood of lost comrades. The doctor took a piece of paper and began to write the verses that would earn him fame:
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
After writing his thoughts on that piece of scrap paper, he discarded it on the ground and returned to his medical condition. Another soldier found it and gave it to his commanding officer. The poem was soon published and in the short order became the most widely read English language verse associated with the Great War.
From Poem To Poppies
Years later and thousands of miles away, a young woman hurried back to her job at the New York City YMCA. Miss Moina Michael, a clerk at the Y, found the last bouquet of poppies at the Wanamaker Department Store in the city. Her plan was to provide the flowers to a group of businessmen at a meeting that afternoon. Each was to wear a poppy in remembrance of the war that had just ended on Nov. 11, 1918.
Michael’s effort was greeted with an enthusiastic response and gained awareness of the “Poppy In Memoriam” movement.
She eventually became known as the “Poppy Lady” and eventually appeared before Congress, where the poppy was adapted a national symbol of sacrifice. The poppy became the official flower of The American Legion, and distribution of poppies became a Legion national program in 1924. T
Today, millions of Americans wear the symbol of “Flanders Fields” on Memorial Day.
American Legion poppies are created by veterans using materials supplied by the American Legion Auxiliary and distributed by Legion members during the month of May. One hundred percent of donations go to serve the needs of veterans—both retired and active.
The Legion urges citizens to buy and wear a poppy this Memorial Day.
