During the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19^th century, a writer made a connection between barren fields before battle began and an explosion of red flowers from the blood drenched fields afterwards.

Prior to the First World War very few poppies grew in Flanders. The soil was chalky but this changed after becoming rich in lime from the rubble after tremendous bombing. When war ended, the lime was absorbed and the flower disappeared.

So the connection was made again, this time by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian doctor who was enlisted to help the allies in the war.

Up to 10 million soldiers were killed in the First World War and it is estimated that 1.4 million civilians died as well. John McCrae went into the line at Ypres and he wrote, "One can see the dead lying there on the front field. And in places where the enemy threw in an attack, they lie very thick on the slopes of the German trenches."

After 17 days and nights when the allies repulsed wave after wave of the attacking enemy, John McCrae left Ypres with the 13 lines of his poem, 'In Flanders Fields' written on a scrap of paper.

The words speak of the fields in Flanders but the subject is that of a fear. That the dead will be forgotten, that their death will be in vain.

The poem was published in 'Punch' magazine and by 1918 it was well known throughout the allied world. An American woman, Moina Michael, wrote these words in reply:

We cherish too, the Poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led.

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies.

She then started to wear a red poppy in memory of the sacrifice of the millions who died on the battlefield. Madam Guerin, a French woman who learned of the custom on a visit to the United States, took it one step further. On her return to France she hand-made red poppies to raise money for destitute women and children in war torn areas of France.

So the tradition began. Remembrance, as symbolised by the poppy, has now become our answer to belie the fear expressed by John McCrae.

The Poppy - Symbol of Unity