Battlefield Poppy

(Biker Bear's challenge for Flower Friday today is 'B')


Battlefield Poppy
Red Poppies have become symbols of war remembrance since John McCrae was inspired by the sights of poppies on the battlefields  and wrote ‘On Flanders Fields’ after the death of a friend in WW1.    Today it is 100 years ago since the start of the 20 week long Battle of the Somme and commemorations have been taking place to mark the dreadful day when nearly 20,000 British, 1,500 French and about 12,000 German soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours with thousands more wounded.  A German officer wrote   ‘Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.’
The poet John Masefield was old enough to be exempt from military service but worked for a while at a hospital for French soldiers and then was asked by the British Military Intelligence to write an account on the Battle of the Somme.  He wrote All wars end; even this war will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began, will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps.
Today on the battlefields it is very difficult to trace the battle lines and visualise the horror faced by those brave men of 100 years ago as so many fields now look like this field of wheat.  This too bears no resemblance to the battlefield where it is said that the Picts and Angles fought at the Battle of Athelstaneford in 832. 
As the delicate poppies continue to flourish on the sides of fields blowing in the strong wind on the site of the former battlefield it reminded me of the sacrifice of so many who died in ‘the War to end all wars’   Each November the poppy is a symbol of remembering those and many others who have suffered or died in war.