City of London Poppy Day

Yesterday was Poppy Day in London. Prince Charles joined in support of the fundraising effort to collect one million pounds in one day. The focused one day goal was part of the Royal British Legion's overall goal to raise forty-two million pounds this year in support of armed forces families.
Poppies became the emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem In Flanders Fields. I remember as a young girl finding a booklet of flowers and poems my mother had made when she was in grade school. She wouldn't let me have it to look at on my own which told me it was something special to her. She read one of the poems to me which always stuck in my mind even though I didn't understand its meaning at the time.

Before each selection of her booklet was a water color of the flower mentioned in the following poem. This is the Poppy water color before In Flanders Fields. The colors are just as bright as when she painted them eighty years ago.

And look at her penmanship! Perfect. If the booklet was an assignment of some sort, maybe it was to showcase students' handwriting?

Major John McCrae wrote the poem after the second battle of Ypres in 1915. This is the poem:

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still lovely singing fly,
Scare 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.

The 11th hour of the 11th Day of the 11th month in 1918 the guns fell silent, the war to end all wars was over. Armistice Day is now known as Veterans' Day in the United States - that's November 11, lest we forget.