Remembrance Sunday 2020

The flower that we associate with remembrance is of course the red poppy.

The opening lines of the World War I poem "In Flanders Fields" refer to poppies growing among the graves of war victims in a region of Belgium. The poem is written from the point of view of the fallen soldiers and in its last verse, the soldiers call on the living to continue the conflict. The poem was written by the  the surgeon Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae  on 3 May 1915 after witnessing the death of his friend and fellow soldier during the second battle of Ypres. He himself was to die of pneumonia in 1918

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.

The poppy in the photograph is a crystal sand-cast, designed by Sarah Peterson and made by Caithness Glass, to commemorate the outbreak of the First World War.