Why is the poppy a symbol of remembrance?
Because red field poppies flourished in the shell-churned soil of the Western Front, and John McCrae's 1915 poem "In Flanders Fields" tied them to the graves of the dead. Moina Michael in the United States and Anna Guérin of France then made the flower a badge and a fundraiser, adopted by veterans' groups from 1920.1
Each November millions of people in Britain, Canada and Australia pin a red flower to their coats. The poppy is the best known symbol of remembrance of the First World War, yet it became one almost by chance: a wild flower on broken ground, a grieving doctor's poem, and two determined women.2
Key points
- The flower: red field poppies thrived in the soil churned up by shelling on the Western Front.3
- The poem: John McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" near Ypres in May 1915, and Punch printed it on 8 December 1915.4
- The campaigners: Moina Michael began wearing a poppy in November 1918, and Anna Guérin's French-made poppies reached British, Canadian and Australian veterans in 1921.5
- The appeals: Britain's first Poppy Day was 11 November 1921; New Zealand's followed in April 1922.6
- In Poland red poppies recall above all a song of 1944 about Monte Cassino.7
Why do people wear poppies on Remembrance Day?
People wear poppies to remember those who died in war and to raise money for veterans and their families. Red field poppies grew on the battlefields of Flanders and northern France, John McCrae's poem made them the flower of the fallen, and veterans' organizations have sold them every year since 1921.8
A flower of broken ground
The field poppy is a weed of disturbed earth. On the Western Front land was fought over and blasted by artillery again and again, and the shelling brought buried poppy seeds to the surface, where they sprouted in the light. Soldiers saw the flowers everywhere, and some pressed the petals into letters sent home. Among them were the fields around Ypres in Belgian Flanders, fought over from the first battle there in 1914 to Passchendaele in 1917.9
John McCrae and "In Flanders Fields"
John McCrae, a doctor from Guelph, Ontario, served as a medical officer with the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, during the Second Battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915. On 2 May 1915 his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed in the fighting, and McCrae led the burial service himself. The poem is dated to the next day, 3 May. Accounts differ on whether he wrote it on an ambulance step or inside the Essex Farm dressing station.10
The Spectator in London turned the poem down, but Punch printed it on 8 December 1915; according to The Canadian Encyclopedia, McCrae's name did not appear with it. It quickly became one of the most popular poems of the war. Its opening line, "In Flanders fields the poppies blow", tied the flower to the graves of the dead. McCrae did not live to see what followed: he died of pneumonia at Wimereux in northern France on 28 January 1918.11
Moina Michael, the American who kept the faith
Moina Michael, a teacher from Georgia, was working for the YMCA in New York when McCrae's poem moved her. Just before the Armistice of November 1918 she wrote a reply in verse, "We Shall Keep the Faith", and resolved always to wear a red poppy in memory of the dead; the University of Georgia dates her poem to 9 November. The National WWI Museum dates her first sales of the memorial poppy to that November, and back in Georgia she campaigned by letter for its adoption across the country. In 1920 the American Legion made the red poppy its memorial flower.12
Anna Guérin, the Poppy Lady from France
Anna Guérin, a French lecturer, turned the idea into an international fundraiser. Through her American and French Children's League she organized French women, children and veterans to make cloth poppies, sold abroad to help rebuild the devastated regions of France. A tag on one of her poppies, now in the Australian War Memorial, reads "Poppy Lady From France", and IWM notes that by 1920 her work had helped bring the American Legion to adopt the flower.13
Britain: the first Poppy Appeal, 1921
The British Legion was only months old when Guérin visited it in 1921 with samples of poppies made by French women and asked whether it would adopt the flower to raise funds; IWM dates the visit to August. According to the Legion, it ordered a million poppies from her, then eight million more from British makers after Earl Haig, its figurehead, declared that 11 November should be a Poppy Day. The first appeal, on 11 November 1921, sold out almost at once. The Legion puts the sum raised at over £100,000; IWM curator Laura Clouting compares it to around three million pounds today.14
Accounts differ on who took the first step. Poppyscotland's history says Haig himself noticed French widows selling silk poppies and ordered nine million for the day, while the Legion and IWM give the initiative to Guérin.15
The Poppy Factory and Lady Haig's four petals
In 1922 the Legion set up its own poppy factory, staffed by disabled ex-servicemen. The Legion credits Major George Howson MC, founder of the Disabled Society, with starting it on the Old Kent Road in London; 41 disabled men filled the order for the 1922 appeal, and the works moved to Richmond in 1926. It still makes poppies today.16
Few of those poppies reached Scotland, so in 1926 Lady Haig, the field marshal's wife, set up a factory in Edinburgh to make poppies for Scotland alone. Its poppies have four petals and no leaf, while the Richmond design has two petals and a leaf, a difference that remains today.17
Canada: McCrae's country
Guérin's idea reached the Great War Veterans Association, forerunner of the Royal Canadian Legion, in 1921. The Legion records that it was discussed at a meeting in Port Arthur, Ontario, now Thunder Bay, and adopted on 6 July 1921.18
Australia and New Zealand
The Australian Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League, forerunner of today's RSL, first sold poppies for Armistice Day in 1921. According to the Australian War Memorial it imported a million silk poppies made with Guérin's league and sold them for a shilling each, with part of the money going to a charity for French children.19
New Zealand took a different path. In 1921 Guérin's representative, Colonel Moffatt (the RSA spells it Moffat), visited the country, and the RSA, its returned soldiers' association, ordered some 360,000 French-made poppies for Armistice Day, but the shipment arrived too late. The appeal moved to the eve of Anzac Day, the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. New Zealand's first Poppy Day was held on 24 April 1922 and raised £13,166, part of it sent to the French Children's League.20
The United States: Buddy Poppies and National Poppy Day
In the United States the poppy belongs mostly to spring. After the American Legion adopted it in 1920, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, by its own account, held its first nationwide poppy distribution in 1922. Its "Buddy Poppies" are assembled by disabled and needy veterans, a practice the VFW dates to 1924. According to the American Legion Auxiliary, the Legion family asked Congress to designate the Friday before Memorial Day, in late May, as National Poppy Day.21
How and when the poppy is worn
In Britain the poppy is worn in the weeks before Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, and the Legion says a poppy can be worn at any time of year to show support for the armed forces, past or present. The Royal Canadian Legion asks Canadians to wear the poppy on the left side, over the heart, from 24 October until 11 November.22
The white poppy and other colors
Not everyone wears red. The white poppy goes back to 1933 and members of the Co-operative Women's Guild; according to the Peace Pledge Union, many of them had lost relatives and friends in the First World War. IWM describes the white poppy as a peace symbol taken up by the Peace Pledge Union in the 1930s to challenge militarism; the union, which distributes it today, says it remembers all victims of war, civilians included. IWM also notes that some people see the red poppy itself as a contested symbol.23
Red poppies in Poland: Monte Cassino
The poppy badge is mainly a Commonwealth and American custom. In Poland 11 November is above all Independence Day, as our article on Veterans Day and 11 November explains. For Poles, red poppies mean one song: "Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino" (The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino). It was written in the night of 17 to 18 May 1944, hours before soldiers of the Polish II Corps took the monastery hill at Monte Cassino. The words are by Feliks Konarski, known as Ref-Ren, and the music by Alfred Schütz, both serving with the II Corps. The history portal dzieje.pl observes that comparisons between poppies and the blood of the fallen can already be found in McCrae's poem.24
