Every year at this time I plan to go up to the WW1 battlefields in Flanders and pay my respects. Every year I bottle out. I don't think I could do it without falling to pieces. This is why:
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.
10 comments:
You already paid them your respects with this poem, Daphne.
This is such a sad commemorance day; even the clouds are weeping.
Yes indeed, it is grey and drizzly in the Big Sprout, and the Berlaymont is shrouded in mist. It was probably a bit like this when the guns fell silent.
I wear a poppy for all the poor souls who still die needlessly every day all over the world.
It seems that poppies have suddenly become a very controversial subject...
What next?
If ever you do go please take my spirit with you.
A controversy over white poppies versus red.
As fas as I know, the first flowers to grow on Flanders fields after the fighting were poppies.
And they were red.
And while there are still veterans alive from the two World Wars, red our replicas should stay.
Well said that man. The symbolism of the red poppy is important - the colour of the blood that was shed. White poppies sounds like the beginning of a gradual airbrushing out of history of the tragedy of the two world wars.
Just to say, I've been to the trenches a few years back. Yes, I went when the weather was great, so it didn't look too bad. However, I did try to visualise the place being knee deep in mud, the smells, the noise, the blind fear of the young men who lived and died.
We always say, never again, but our leaders don't seem to be able to follow that, they seem to, can I say, relish in it?
Yes, to red poppies.
Because McCrae was Canadian, every school child over here ( of a certain age) can recite that poem.
Those born after 1970, when recitation was thrown out the window, can still recite parts of it, because it features in every Remembrance Day ceremony.
And I always cry when some frail warrior recites this part of the Ode from Binyon's For the Fallen.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Cue The Last Post. DAMN! That would have been a great title for my third and last post about the Armistice. I'll save it for next year.
Yes, that one brings a tear to my eye too.
My mother used to sing that song to us when we were little.
She'd sing, 'In Flanders fields the poppies blow, poppies, poppies...
Between the crosses, row on row, poppies, poppies...'
Interesting how our media doesn't make much of this day, even though men from here fought in the WW 2, for British Guiana.
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