What is the poppys significance to Remembrance Day?
Lieutenant Colonel McCrae is being bombarded by the sight, sounds and smells of the dead and wounded. His young friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer is literally blown into pieces when he is struck with a German shell. McCrae sees his friend buried in the graveyard formed by necessity and his simple wooden white cross joining so many others. Perhaps it is this young man’s death that leads him to write the famous poem “In Flanders Field”. The red poppy seeds, which can lie dormant in the ground for years, were being awakened due to the ground being churned by all the fighting, trampling and grave digging. They grew over the graves of the fallen soldiers and their brilliant red color contrasted with the white crosses. In a moment of artistic inspiration McCrae used them to symbolize the fallen soldiers and forever bound the red poppy to the first Great War. He is thought to have been struck by the fact that although there was death all about him life still continued to play forward. The larks
