Which flower commemorates the war dead

Poppies were also used as emblems on tombstones to symbolize eternal sleep. After all, opium is extracted from poppies and used as a sedative.

Therefore, the added appeal of its use to represent eternal sleep prevails. However, many history buffs credit Canadian surgeon and soldier John McCrae for popularizing its use for military remembrance ceremonies. McCrae was inspired to write this poem on May 3, , after presiding over the funeral of a friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer.

But his fellow soldiers, moved by the sentiments, retrieved the poem which inspired many. Poppies were a cultural reference point to many at that time.

Going back to the destruction of the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, red poppies magically grew around the bodies of the fallen soldiers on what seemed like a barren land. Poppies became an image of hope for peace with the unspoken message that sacrifice was noble for the greater good. In late , the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open by guns blazing and fighting.

Once the conflict was over, one of the only plants to grow were the poppies. Will Longstaff, for example, painted Menin Gate at midnight , a monumental commemoration to men who were buried in unmarked graves on the Western Front in which the ghosts of the dead rise up among blood red poppies that grow in the same soil where their bodies decayed.

On churned up war landscapes, masses of wildflowers covered derelict tanks and blanketed the ground where the dead lay, juxtaposing cold metal and the destructive power of men with the organic growth and regenerative power of nature. Hurley could not ignore the cruel irony of all that fragile beauty growing free in the midst of industrialised warfare, mass killing, and the corpses of the dead.

Hurley well understood the power of the poppy. It may also be that flowers have a particular power over our perception. When Cecil Malthus , a New Zealand soldier at Gallipoli in , found himself under attack, it was not the faces of the soldiers around him that he remembered, but the faces of self-sown poppies and daisies on the ground. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in.

But poppy flowers sprouted on the land of thousands of dead men. In early May , a Canadian doctor and poet, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who recently lost a friend and a fellow lieutenant in the war witnessed the sight of bright red poppies flourishing in an unlikely place.

The poem has been part of memorial ceremonies across the world ever since. His poem moved the heart of Moina Michael, an American professor, who wrote her own poem in titled "We shall keep the faith.

She did this to raise funds for veterans returning from WWI, and succeeded. In , she also made and sold red silk poppies, according to the Royal British Legion. The Royal British Legion then ordered 9 million of those poppies and sold them on Nov. The poppies raised a generous amount of money to assist WWI veterans find new jobs and housing.

The following year in , Major Geroge Howson, a British army officer, established the Poppy Factory in Richmond, England, to employ disabled veterans.