During the First World War (1914-1918) much of the fighting took place in Western Europe, especially in and around a region of northern France and Belgium known as Flanders. Previously beautiful countryside was blasted, bombed, burned, and fought over, again and again. The ‘no-man’s land’ between the two opposing sides became a bleak wasteland where nothing could grow. Bright red Flanders Poppies (Papaver Rhoeas) however, were delicate but resilient flowers that thrived in distressed soil, and they flourished in the midst of the chaos and destruction. In early May 1915, shortly after losing his best friend in battle at Ypres, Belgium, a Canadian Allied Soldier named Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was so inspired by the sight of the poppies burgeoning in the wastelands between the opposing forces that he wrote the now famous poem, "In Flanders Fields.”
McCrae was killed in France on January 28, 1918. His poem and the poppies inspired many Veterans’ organizations to use poppies to raise money and awareness for disabled and needy Vets, including the VFW in the US, which began distributing the Buddy Poppy®, made by disabled and needy American Veterans, on Memorial Day 1922. Today the VFW Buddy Poppy Program provides compensation to the Veterans who assemble the poppies, provides money for local, state, and national Veterans’ rehabilitation and service programs, and provides support for the VFW National Home for Children in Eaton Rapids, Michigan.
At the close of the American Civil War, nearly 3 million Americans had served in uniform, which was a little more than 10 percent of our population at that time. Nearly a million of them died; either in combat, from disease, or while in prison camps. Americans struggled with the unfathomable enormity of how to remember and honor this vast number of fallen Service-members. Beginning in small towns and local cemeteries, groups of Americans made time each year to visit gravesides of their beloved fallen.
In 1868, The Grand Army of the Republic, an American Veterans’ organization that sowed the seeds for the VFW, designated the last Monday in May as ‘Decoration Day’ throughout the North, and it quickly spread through the entire nation. Following the terrible struggles of the two World Wars, the holiday name gradually shifted to Memorial Day, with various late May dates used around the Country. Finally in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which made Memorial Day anofficial Federal Holiday, and designated it’s observance as the last Monday in May. Unlike Veterans Day in November, which is officially a holiday to recognize all Americans who serve or have served in the military, Memorial Day is specifically reserved to remember those heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice on the ‘altar of freedom’, as Abraham Lincoln so eloquently called it.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS by John McCrae
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
