The Church Of The Holy Rood      --      Wool, Dorset, U.K.

From the Parish News - November 2006

(Illustration from http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/)

November is the time of the year when we wear a red poppy in memory of those who sacrificed their lives for us during wars.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month marks the signing of the Armistice, on 11^th November 1918, to signal the end of World War One. On that day the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than four years continuous warfare.

Remembrance Day is also known as Poppy Day, and traditionally a red poppy is worn. They are sold by the Royal British legion, a charity dedicated to helping war veterans.

But why a poppy?

Throughout the world the poppy is associated with the remembrance of those who died in order that we may be free, but how many of us are aware of the reason of how and why the poppy became the symbol of remembrance and an integral part of the work of the Royal British Legion.

Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium. It saw some of the most concentrated and bloodiest fighting of the First World War. There was complete devastation. Buildings, roads, trees and natural life simply disappeared. Where once there were homes and farms there was now a sea of mud - a grave for the dead where men still lived and fought. Only one other living thing survived. The poppy flowering each year with the coming of the warm weather, brought life, hope, colour and reassurance to those still fighting.

John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, was so deeply moved by what he saw in northern France that, in 1915 in his pocket book, he scribbled down the poem "In Flanders Fields" .

IN FLANDERS FIELDS
by John McCrae

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 first two minutes silence in London on 11th November in 1919 was reported in the Manchester Guardian the following day.

‘The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.

The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.

Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of ‘attention’. An elderly woman, not far away wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stayed very still. The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain….And the spirit of mercy brooded over it all.’

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