BritinBritain
Per Ardua Ad Astra
I found this interesting thread regarding the wearing of red poppies leading up to Rememberance day 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to remember the dead.
http://www.lightinfantry.org.uk/other/faq.htm#1v
Why is the poppy significant?
Long known as the corn poppy because it flourishes as a weed in grain fields, the Flanders poppy as it is now usually called, grew profusely in the trenches and craters of the war zone. Artillery shells and shrapnel stirred up the earth and exposed the seeds to the light they needed to germinate. In the years immediately following World War 1, governments and the whole of society, had not accepted the responsibility for those incapacitated and bereft as a result of war. In Britain, unemployment accentuated the problem.
Earl Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, undertook the task of organising the British Legion as a means of coping with the problems of hundreds and thousands of men who had served under him in battle.
In 1921, a group of widows of French ex-servicemen called on him at the British Legion Headquarters.
They brought with them from France some poppies they had made, and suggested that they might be sold as a means of raising money to aid the distressed among those who were incapacitated as a result of the war.
http://www.lightinfantry.org.uk/other/faq.htm#1v
Why is the poppy significant?
Long known as the corn poppy because it flourishes as a weed in grain fields, the Flanders poppy as it is now usually called, grew profusely in the trenches and craters of the war zone. Artillery shells and shrapnel stirred up the earth and exposed the seeds to the light they needed to germinate. In the years immediately following World War 1, governments and the whole of society, had not accepted the responsibility for those incapacitated and bereft as a result of war. In Britain, unemployment accentuated the problem.
Earl Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, undertook the task of organising the British Legion as a means of coping with the problems of hundreds and thousands of men who had served under him in battle.
In 1921, a group of widows of French ex-servicemen called on him at the British Legion Headquarters.
They brought with them from France some poppies they had made, and suggested that they might be sold as a means of raising money to aid the distressed among those who were incapacitated as a result of the war.
