In Memory

Today is a day known as Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, or Armistice Day, depending on which country you live in. Although I am not from any of the countries which observes this day (though we do observe Veteran’s Day in the US on November 11), I think the tradition is beautiful. It is a day to commemorate the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and civilians in times of war, specifically since the First World War. It is observed on 11 November to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918. Poppies are significant to Remembrance Day as a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae‘s poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their red colour an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare. Today people where a red poppy pinned to their clothing in remembrance.

I knit up a poppy (above) out some Brown Sheep Cotton fleece using this pattern: http://www.knitonthenet.com/poppy/

I also thought that since Squirrel had a cute new red and black outfit to wear (thank you Mom!), she should have her own matching poppy hair clip. I crocheted the flower using some cotton crochet thread and this pattern: http://erssie.blogspot.com/2007/10/remembrance-day-is-coming-soon-i-hope.html

I leave you today with the poem “In Flanders Fields”. I have always thought that this poem is beautiful. But it became all the more potent to me to learn that it was written upon a scrap of paper upon the back of Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, in the trenches towards the end of WWI, during a lull in the bombings (as recited to his grandson).

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
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.

–John McCrae