Poppies, Flanders and Remembrance

I bought my poppy at a local supermarket today and my two year old cousin Lilia asked me what it was. I told her it was a special flower and that she will learn what it means when she is older - a real bottle-job answer.

Why do we were poppies? The stock answer is that we do it to remember the brave soldiers who fought in the devastating world wars. It conjures images of the Remembrance Service, Big Ben, and dear veteran servicemen wearing their medals with pride.

It's about so much more than that - but debate still arises at to whether red poppies are an appropriate manifestation of national remembrance.
As early as 1926, the White Poppy appeal began to take off, now a campaign carried on by the Peace Pledge Union. The emphasis is to disassociate remembrance with war - the symbol of the red poppy.

But that's a depiction of war Lilia could easily imagine - guns, explosions, bombs and blood. Like it or not, war carves the path of the world. When you're pinning your poppy to your lapel this week or next - take a moment and consider what you're remembering.

It's very difficult to even imagine the horrors of the Somme, the nightmares of the blitz and the despair of the 'War on Terror'. War is deep - it's about kids leaving home, letters to loved ones,  bonds of fellowship which remain to the death - in its most literal sense.

The relationship between poppies and war is simple - Lieutenant Colonel John McRae penned 'In Flanders Fields' having been moved by the contrast of the beautiful field he and his kin had once destroyed, fought, laughed, cried and died together in.

'In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row.'

Life and death has a complicated relationship. In the field of corpses, flowers still grow - by November the 11th 1918, the First World War had claimed approximately 8.5 million lives. Yet here we still are. And long may they be with us - in our thoughts, prayers, words and of course, in our lives.