the Poppy

super_furry

The same people who have a problem with people wearing poppies in memory of their relatives, were throwing shoes and eggs at Gardai today.

mooman

KeithAFC wrote: »

The ulstermen fought like warriors during the Somme. Lest we forget.

People fighting wars tend to fight like warriors alright:pac:

epgc3fyqirnbsx

Maxton Gifted Codfish wrote: »

Few, if any, of the guys who fought & died believed in violence either.

Slasher, don't know why I pick you. But something you might be interested in, a coincidence of sorts.

I was on duty one night in Lebanon and got chatting with a guy I was on with. We got chatting about the first world world, and it turned out that both our great-grandfathers had joined the Royal Dubliner Fusilllers at the same time, served in the same unit on the same battle fields.

He great-grandfather later died in the war, mine survived... But here we were, generations apart, the great-grandson's of these men - serving together in another foreign land!.

OP, wear the damned poppy and fvck the begrudgers.

I really don't believe in fate but I would imagine that if I was in your shoes right then you would have to wonder if your path was chosen!

arybvtcw0eolkf

Jenny Melodic Hurdler wrote: »

I really don't believe in fate but I would imagine that if I was in your shoes right then you would have to wonder if your path was chosen!

Well I do think it was a coincidence, but a nice one too. And a story I like to tell on occasion, if the moment is right.

KeithAFC

I grew up being told of the stories about the volunteers. A special generation indeed.

My name is URL

Maxton Gifted Codfish wrote: »

Few, if any, of the guys who fought & died believed in violence either.

Regardless, I have nothing against them anyway. They did what they had to do, for everyone else's benefit, I just don't care for the respect shown towards that when contrasted with the contempt shown towards Irish freedom fighters. Where one is a hero and the other a malcontent. It's a sentiment shown by many on here and I've no qualms about feeling differently.

aDeener

super_furry wrote: »

The same people who have a problem with people wearing poppies in memory of their relatives, were throwing shoes and eggs at Gardai today.

why do people need a poppy to remember their relatives?

Jumpy

If you dont want to wear the poppy, wear a sprig of rosemary. Its also a symbol of war rememberance. But people dont seem to have the same reaction to it as the poppy.

Biggins

aDeener wrote: »

why do people need a poppy to remember their relatives?

Not to remember their relatives but to take time-out to honour them in public as well as in private.

Cookie33

storm2811 wrote: »

Ahh I see.
I don't see the problem, there's probably hundreds, if not more, people living here who've had relatives or friends in the war who just want to remember them/show respect.

Me either. Personally I wear one not only to remember the WW1 & WW2 but also the troubles in N. Ireland and the current war in Iraq

Callan57

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

The great war was far from noble. Morally it was unjustified and its consequences led to world war II.

'The Great War' WW1 was a family spat that got out of hand. And as with most wars the majority of those who went to fight were poor, unemployed and had little or no education and misguidedly fought to uphold a system that thought of & treated them as second class citizens.
That does not mean that their deeds of heroism should not be respected & honoured.

KeithAFC

Callan57 wrote: »

'The Great War' WW1 was a family spat that got out of hand. And as with most wars the majority of those who went to fight were poor, unemployed and had little or no education and misguidedly fought to uphold a system that thought of & treated them as second class citizens.
That does not mean that their deeds of heroism should not be respected & honoured.

Your forgetting the people who WANTED to fight. Like the UVF.

Dionysus

death wish wrote: »

i do have much respect for the british army. the wee british isles that managed to conquer the world.

:rolleyes:

Dionysus

Jenny Melodic Hurdler wrote: »

Yes but hindsight is a great thing. I said it was noble in a lot of respects, certainly not all.

What respects? The British propaganda claim that their Empire was going to war to "fight for the freedom of small nations" while refusing to allow the freedom of this small nation from the British Empire?

What was "noble" about WW I? There's far too much romanticism, myth-making and glorification of idiocy and naiveté going on in this thread at the moment.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Its near chucking out time in shinner bar's up and down the country...

/don's helmet & flakker, and heads for the bunker.

Dionysus

My name is URL wrote: »

I do appreciate the soldiers who fought for us and our ideals.

In what respect did any of these people "fight for us and our ideals"? Those who fought on the British side fought in reality to preserve the (very favourable) British balance of power in Europe, which for the first time since 1815 (Waterloo) was threatened by another European power. No more and no less. There was nothing noble about this (as other posters appear to suggest). This is why many thousands of Irishmen in 1914 refused to partake in what was, in reality, a nationalistic war between imperial powers: "We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland'

Wolfe Tone

I think I will stick with the Lily.

Tell me, is this just to commemorate those who died in WW1?

Dionysus

Maxton Gifted Codfish wrote: »

Few, if any, of the guys who fought & died believed in violence either.

No, they just went to war because they believed nothing would change from using violence? It makes perfect sense. They went to war to lovebomb the other side, having a strong belief that love, not bullets, would win the war. They were really throwing flowers at each other, not engaging in violence against each other.

Really.:rolleyes:

stovelid

Maxton Gifted Codfish wrote: »

Its near chucking out time in shinner bar's up and down the country...

/don's helmet & flakker, and heads for the bunker.

All-Ireland tomorrow as well. Will be chasers with every pint.

Wolfe Tone

Nice to see we are starting the republican bashing quite early in the thread.

HxGH

More likely to partake in daffodil day, but hey, whatever floats your boat?

gurramok

Jayzus the amount of muppets who don't understand that the contribution from buying a poppy goes to modern British Soldiers and not only those in the Somme.

If it was only for those that died in WW1, fair enough, but you're bloody stretching it commemorating those who served in Northern Ireland like Bloody Sunday.

And no, thats not begrudging. I speak as one who has relatives who had served in the British Army based in Leicester, England.

Biggins

Lets get the record right about "The Poppy".

It is NOT just a British thing.

Colonel John McCrae, who was Professor of Medicine at McGill University in Canada before WW1 (joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto), first described the red poppy, the Flanders’ poppy, as the flower of remembrance.

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the Boer War as a gunner, but went to France in WW1 as a medical officer with the first Canadian contingent.

It was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and MAJ John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime. As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, MAJ McCrae, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. MAJ McCrae later wrote of it:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days .... Seventeen days of Hades!
At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done "(1).

One death particularly affected MAJ McCrae. A young friend and former student, LT Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May. LT Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. At the second battle of Ypres in 1915, when in charge of a small first-aid post, he wrote in pencil on a page from his despatch book a poem that has come to be known as "Flanders’ Field" which described the poppies that marked the graves of soldiers killed fighting for their country. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook (2).

A young soldier watched him write it (written May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres). Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave." When he finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:

The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. The word blow was not used in the first line though it was used later when the poem later appeared in Punch. But it was used in the second last line. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene (3).

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer -- either LTCOL Edward Morrison, the former Ottawa newspaper editor who commanded the 1st Brigade of artillery (4), or LTCOL J.M. Elder (5), depending on which source is consulted -- retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. "The Spectator," in London, rejected it, but "Punch" published it on 8 December 1915.

McCrae's "In Flanders’ Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

In Flanders’ Fields

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.

COL McCrae was wounded in May 1918 and was taken to one of the big hospitals on the coast of France. On the third evening he was wheeled to the balcony of his room to look over the sea towards the cliffs of Dover. The verses were obviously in his mind, for he said to the doctor ""ell them, if ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep." That same night COL McCrae died.

Each Remembrance Day the British Legion lays a wreath on his grave – a tribute to a great man whose thoughts were always for others.

The wearing of the poppy to keep faith began when an American, Miss Moira Michael, read the poem "In Flanders Field" and was so greatly impressed that she decided always to wear a poppy to keep the faith. Miss Michael wrote a reply after reading "In Flanders Field" entitled "We Shall Keep the Faith":

Oh! You who sleep in Flanders’ fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew;
We caught the torch you threw;
And holding high we kept
The faith with those who died.
We cherish, too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valour led.
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders’ Fields.
And now the torch and poppy red
Wear in honour of our dead
Fear not that ye have died for naught
We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders’ Fields.

Miss Michael worked for the YMCA in America and on Saturday 9 November 1918 hosted a meeting of YMCA wartime secretaries from other countries. When several of the secretaries presented her with a small gift of money to thank her for her hospitality, she said she would spend it on poppies and told them the story of McCrae’s poem and her decision to always wear a red poppy.

The French secretary, Madame Guerin, conceived the idea of selling artificial poppies to raise money to help needy soldiers and their families, and she approached organisations among the countries of the world that had fought as allies in Europe to promote the concept.

http://www.defence.gov.au/army/traditions/documents/inflandersfield_1.htm

gurramok

Canada is part of the British Commonwealth Biggins, you forgot that.

Dyr

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

I think I will stick with the Lily.

Tell me, is this just to commemorate those who died in WW1?

Nope, If your dear oul'great grandda helped to burn cork city in 1920 you can rest easy that the poppy brigade in this country are honouring his memory too.

Is'nt that right lads?

Biggins

gurramok wrote: »

Canada is part of the British Commonwealth Biggins, you forgot that.

True but it was a Canadian amid Canadian troops - not British troops just being jingoistic about their own.

The Canadian was writing about all soldiers but hell... that fact can be over looked by those that wish to twist the truth of it for their own reasons.

Then an American came up with the idea of wearing it, thereafter a French person came up with the idea of selling them for a noble cause.

Its far, far from being just a British thing.

KrazeeEyezKilla

If some people want to wear a poppy than that's fair enough, the dead soldiers deserve respect. It only bothers my when they start with the usual childish digs about Celtic Fans and "Shinners". The way that the whole Poppy thing has grown so much in recent years as the last few WW1 soldiers have been dying makes it seem like it's more about softening up attitudes to Iraq and Afghanistan than remembering soldiers. It's laughable when you see people trying to make out that the war was far small nations or that our ideals where being protected by it. As already mentioned it was a row between the ruling powers of Europe with ordinary people being made pay the price.

gurramok

Biggins wrote: »

True but it was Canadian amid Canadian troops - not British troops just being jingoistic about their own.

The Canadian was writing about all soldiers but hell... that fact can be over looked by those that wish to twist the truth of it for their own reasons.

Do you know anything about the Canada that went to both World Wars?

Canada is(was) split down the middle. Half were colonial British and the other half colonial French. As the British won the war with the French for Canada to have a British Head of State, Canada was a loyal servant of when Britain is in trouble.

Now, after all that is said, why don't Belgium, France, Italy, Germany & USA use the poppy to remember their fallen in WW1??

Biggins

gurramok wrote: »

Do you know anything about the Canada that went to both World Wars?

Canada is(was) split down the middle. Half were colonial British and the other half colonial French. As the British won the war with the French for Canada to have a British Head of State, Canada was a loyal servant of when Britain is in trouble.

Now, after all that is said, why don't Belgium, France, Italy, Germany & USA use the poppy to remember their fallen in WW1??

Have you bothered to read the above edited post - which I did to clarity the matter?

gurramok

Biggins wrote: »

Have you bothered to read the above edited post - which I did to clarity the matter?

Re-read your edited post..this one yeh?

"Then an American came up with the idea of wearing it, thereafter a French person came up with the idea of selling them for a noble cause.

Its far, far from being just a British thing."

It is a nationalistic British thing, they hijacked it. I have never seen Americans nor French wearing the poppy.

De-nationalise it as a symbol so all nations can wear it in harmony.