100 years after WWI, poppy lives on as symbol

As reported in 'The Japan News' : AP file photo Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II walks through a field of ceramic poppies at The Tower of London on Oct. 16.

The Associated Press, LONDON (AP) — William Sellick pinched the tiny scarlet petals with deft ease, turning them into paper poppies and pressing them into a wreath. The flowers are a potent symbol of remembrance and patriotism that sprang up in the aftermath of World War I to honor the war dead and raise funds for survivors. A century since the Great War, the poppies live on: They are hung as wreaths or worn on lapels across Britain — from Prime Minister David Cameron to X-Factor celebrities to countless commuters braving the blustery streets of London — as the nation prepares to mark Armistice Day on Nov. 11. Each handmade flower evokes the image of poppies springing up from destruction and decay in Belgium’s Flanders Fields, home to many of the Great War’s bloodiest battlefields. The haunting scene was immortalized in a war poem by Canadian army doctor John McCrae: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses row on row.” McCrae noticed that the resilient red corn poppy was the first plant to flourish in the churned-up landscape. The poem, penned in 1915 shortly after McCrae buried a friend, struck a chord around the world and started poppy symbolism in the English-speaking world. For Sellick, who suffered combat stress after an army tour to Northern Ireland in the 1970s, making poppies is a way to move on from a life shadowed by depression and alcoholism. He doesn’t like to recall his army days, but every November he makes an effort to help plant crosses decorated with poppies outside London’s Westminster Abbey. “Most of the time when we go out to plant the poppy field it’s wet and windy,” he said with a laugh. “But I always make sure I do the plot for my regiment.” In this centenary year of World War I, the poppy is more ubiquitous than ever. At the Tower of London, a crimson sea of ceramic poppies floods the ancient moat in a stunning display titled “Blood Swept Lands and Sea of Red.” A total of 888,426 ceramic flowers — each representing a British soldier who died during the war — were planted over the summer, with the last one to be placed on Armistice Day.