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"In Flanders Fields the poppies grow, Between the crosses, row on row," [1]
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Date: 2023-06-28
Yesterday there was a post showing poppies growing in the disturbed ground around the Ukrainian lines, their scarlet petals falling as a carpet into the trench itself. There are echoes of an earlier conflict.
The common poppy, (Papaver rhoeas) has seeds that can lie dormant in the soil for up to a century. Disturb the soil, expose the seeds to light, provide fertilizer and they will produce an abundance of flowers in late spring/early summer.
Such were the conditions in the World War I battlefields in Flanders. Constant bombardment from the summer of 1914 onward disturbed the soil. It also provided nitrogen from the explosive residue, other nutrients came from the decaying corpses of men and beasts caught in that hellish landscape. Thus, in the spring of 1915 and every one thereafter till the end of the war, the battlefields lit up scarlet in a profusion of poppies. (1)
Lt. Col. John McRae was a Canadian soldier, poet and physician serving close to the frontlines. On 2nd May, 1915 he presided over the burial of his good friend, Alexis Helmer who had been killed in the Second Battle of Ypres. Inspired by the experience, the next day he wrote, In Flanders Fields.
In Flanders Fields the poppies grow,
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.
This poem was published in the magazine Punch (London) in December 1915. It was well received both at home and by the average Tommy in the trenches. In time, because of the reference to poppies growing between the graves of the fallen, the Remembrance Poppy became a memorial symbol of those who died in battle. To this day, (artificial) poppies are worn in the run up to, and during Remembrance Day services (11th November) in the U.K, Canada and South Africa. (2).
Unfortunately, Lt. Col. John McRae did not survive the war. Exhausted and worn down by the experience, he contracted pneumonia and died in January 1918. Poppies no longer bloom in Flanders Fields. The seeds generated during that conflict lie mostly dark and undisturbed now. May it ever be thus.
History rhymes, they say. Over a century later, poppies are blooming in the battlefields of Ukraine. Every petal falling down a vivid, scarlet witness of a limb, an eye, a life lost to a war started by a pathetic, empty, old man.
1
https://www.discoveringbelgium.com/the-poppies-of-flanders/
2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields
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