What’s the significance of poppies and World War I?
Why has a red poppy become the symbol of the War to End All Wars?
Several reasons
All about poppies
Poppies are short-lived perennial flowers.
They’re the native flower of my home state, California, though ours are orange.
Fragile, paper-thin flowers grow on the end of thin green stalks, about eight inches off the ground.
Their tasty seeds can be used as a mild sedative; some varieties relieve pain.
Dorothy and her friends passed through a poppy field in The Wizard of Oz and promptly fell asleep, for example.
Tower of London, September 2014, by David Kronberg
When my husband served in the US Navy nuclear power program, sailors knew not to eat anything with poppy seeds.
During random drug screening, a sailor who ate something with poppy seeds can test positive for having used marijuana. (Such use meant exclusion from the nuclear program during those years)
Opium is derived from the opium poppy, a native of the eastern Mediterranean, in Asia MInor.
It’s grown all over the world, now.
Poppies in Greek mythology
Owing to its sedative effect, the flower is linked to sleep, peace and death in Greek mythology.
The goddess Demeter created the flower so she could sleep after the anguish of losing her daughter Persephone to Hades, the god of the Underworld.
In some mythology they’re considered symbols of the resurrection–and thus hope.
In my novel A Poppy in Remembrance, Claire explains their hopeful nature this way.
“They were a gift for Demeter, to remind her of Persephone left in the underground.
“Poppies symbolize remembering the hopeful in the midst of the difficult.”
As a World War I symbol
During World War I, poppies grew across the fields of Belgium.
Blue and red poppies both. Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash
A sign of churned up battlefields, the flowers dotted the countryside usually in shades of red, though occasionally blue.
They became a famous symbol after the popularity of Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae’s 1916 poem, In Flanders Field,which begins with the memorable line:
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,”
In honor of the war’s armistice in November, 1918, American YMCA worker Moina Michael responded with another poem, We Shall Keep the Faith.
The second stanza included this nod to McCrae’s poem:
“We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;”
Michael announced she would wear a red poppy for the rest of her life to honor the dead.
Following the end of the war, she taught classes to veterans and recognized they needed assistance.
She came up with the idea of selling silk poppies to assist disabled soldiers–which a program the American Legion Auxiliary adopted in 1920.
War Remembrance
Red poppies are the universal remembrance to honor veterans lost to war and as part of Remembrance Day activities.
When you look at photos honoring war service or WWI centenary meetings, you always see a red poppy.
I’ve been handed plastic red poppies in England and at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D. C.
Paintings, etchings, framed copies of In Flanders Field and lots of plastic poppies were evident when we toured the Somme battlefields.
Friends have given me, a WWI novelist, pictures, cups and even a genuine red ceramic poppy that stood with the others at the Tower of London in August, 2014.
Red for resurrection, or blood, or for valor?
Red poppies are a symbol of honor, particularly for those who died in World War I.
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