The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Buddy Poppies are known for “Honoring the Dead by Helping the Living”. While visiting Cape May, I met a veteran selling the poppy flowers to raise money for his fellow veterans. People passed by him, unfortunately, because they did not know what the flowers meant. With the observation of the 100th anniversary of World War I this year and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth Countries, it is important to share the story of their meaning.
Red poppies grew on the battlefields of World War I, striking amidst rows of white crosses for the many lost lives in the trench warfare fought around Flanders, Belgium. Moved by grief, Canadian Colonel John McCrae, a surgeon with Canada’s First Brigade Artillery, wrote a poem “In Flanders Field,” which resounded around the world. Through the work of Anna E. Guerin, France, and Moina Michael, Georgia (US), the sale of artificial poppies helped orphans and others impoverished by the war. By 1920 the American Legion assisted and the “Flowers of Remembrance” were sold throughout the US, Canada, Britain France, Australia, and New Zealand. To expand the support, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) began to sell the Buddy Poppy nationally immediately before Memorial Day in 1922; this became their memorial flower.
The VFW got a trademark for the Buddy Poppy to safeguard that proceeds go directly to the veterans who assemble them, veterans’ rehabilitation, families of deceased veterans, and, in part, the VFW National Home for Children. As you may have seen in ceremonies and exhibits in the news, the United Kingdom has revitalized this recognition.
Dr. McCrae’s poem from the Poetry Foundation:
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.
(Sources: VFW.org, VA.gov, Wiki/Photo from Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Morris Township, NJ)
(First posted on Instagram 5/30/16 for Memorial Day. All Rights Reserved © 2016 Kathleen Helen Levey)
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