The Book of the Poppy (6 page)

FURTHER AFIELD

A key person present at the National American Legion convention in 1920 was a member of the French YWCA, Madame Anna E. Guérin. Like Michael, she found the vision of the Memorial Poppy one that could not be ignored. In particular, she saw possibilities for the sale of large numbers of artificial poppies in her home country, the proceeds going towards helping those who were still suffering from the after-effects of war, particularly orphaned children. Once back in France, she straight away set about producing the fabric poppies for sale. But her ambitions were actually international, and she also began travelling to other countries, or sent representatives, to drive the concept of the Memorial Poppy.

PLACES IN WHICH BRITAIN HAS FOUGHT WARS SINCE 1945

In 1921 alone, Guérin travelled to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain, and the audiences there proved more than open to the idea of the Memorial Poppy. In the same year that millions of poppies were sold across the United States, the Great War Veterans Association of Canada also adopted the poppy as its national emblem of remembrance, on 5 July 1921. The next stop on Guérin’s itinerary was Great Britain, and she sought to meet with none other than Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

Haig is now a rather ambiguous figure in relation to the First World War, blamed by many for directly elevating the numbers of British and Empire casualties during the First World War. Yet his role in the support of post-war veterans was crucial. He was genuinely appalled at the financial hardship experienced by many veterans back on the streets of Britain, so Guérin’s approaches found a receptive ear. Haig was also the president of The British Legion, founded in 1921 through the fusion of four organisations: the Comrades of the Great War, the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers, the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers, and the Officers’ Association.

The idea of a Remembrance Poppy, sold as a way to generate funds for veterans, was quickly embraced by Haig with the support of The British Legion. To handle the proceeds of the sales, Haig established the Earl Haig Fund, which also included the Earl Haig Fund Scotland. The Poppy Factory, manned by five disabled veterans, was founded in 1922 in Old Kent Road, South London. This factory quickly proved too small for the purpose, and in 1926 the production line moved to the disused Lansdown Brewery in Petersham Road, Richmond, with workforce housing built opposite. That same year, Countess Dorothy Haig, Earl Haig’s wife, founded a similar Poppy Factory in Edinburgh. (The role of the Haig Fund is the reason that for many years the black plastic button in the centre of the Remembrance Poppy bore the words ‘Haig Fund’.)

The first British Legion Poppy Day appeal began in the autumn of 1921, with hundreds of thousands of French-made poppies (for this year) selling across the country. But Britain’s imperial connections and the ceaseless energies of Madame Guérin meant that the Remembrance Poppy soon spread further afield – Australia also launched its first poppy appeal in 1921, with the official recognition that the poppy would be worn every year on 11 November. New Zealand followed suit in 1922. In the space of four years, and largely on account of the vision of two women – one American and one French – the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand had adopted what we now call the Remembrance Poppy, establishing national traditions that survive to this day.

THE MODERN POPPY

One of the striking things about the Remembrance Poppy is its durability. Founded in the emotional aftermath of a world war, it could have gradually withered on the vine as time marched on and interest waned. Obviously, the fact that the First World War was followed just over two decades later by an even larger world war kept the idea of remembrance utterly relevant, as did Britain’s numerous post-war conflicts. There have been changes, particularly in terms of the poppy’s administration. For example, soon after the launch of the Poppy Appeal in the UK, The British Legion took over responsibility from the Officers’ Association for running the annual campaign, while in Scotland the Officers’ Association Scotland ran its own appeal independently. Then in 1954, the Earl Haig Fund Scotland was established as a stand-alone charity, albeit renamed in 2006 as the Poppy Appeal Scotland. Meanwhile The British Legion received a royal charter in 1971, to become The Royal British Legion. In 2011, the Poppy Appeal Scotland merged with The Royal British Legion, although it continues to operate as a separate charity.

And what of the Remembrance Poppy itself? Richmond and Edinburgh remain the poppy’s centres of production. The Richmond factory alone produces 34–45 million poppies each year, the whole operation run primarily by a dedicated team of veterans. The poppy is manufactured in a wide range of formats, so alongside the traditional paper and plastic version sit silk poppies, metallic pins, complete wreaths, wooden crosses, crescents, stars and Khandas, and shopping bags. Sold by thousands of volunteers across the country every year, the poppies raise millions of pounds for the causes of veterans and their families. (More about veteran support is described in Chapter 5.) The contribution of this simple item to the welfare of thousands of deserving people is therefore inestimable.

But apart from the vital fundraising performed by the Poppy Appeal every year, it has a deeper purpose. Although it was born from the bitter aftermath of a world war, the poppy has largely avoided becoming just a symbol of British, Commonwealth or American commemoration. It is not jingoistic or threatening (a danger of any national symbol), but instead compels entire nations to stop and reflect upon the human cost of war, both to themselves and to their former enemies. War is a complex and harrowing issue, and one that resists moral, political or philosophical simplicities. Nor must we try to gloss over what it is that soldiers are compelled to do in war. Violence is always a terrible act, whether it is dressed up in uniform or not. Many soldiers are afflicted with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) precisely because the things they were obliged to perform don’t square easily with their fundamental humanity. The Remembrance Poppy does not attempt to glorify or romanticise conflict, but instead, at least once a year, obliges us to face and think about the consequences of war, past, present and future.

3. NOT FORGOTTEN

WALK AROUND THE
centre of any village or town in Britain and you are almost guaranteed to come across a war memorial. They range from the humble – small, now-faded metal plaques bolted to the walls of civic buildings – to majestic cenotaphs and statues, towering memorials to the war dead of generations past. We have become familiar with such features, hastening past them while our daily lives consume our attention. Yet should we stop, just for a moment, and reflect upon what they represent both historically and personally, then it becomes clear that they are extraordinary cultural landmarks.

Take, for example, the war memorial that adorns just one, very particular, location – Woking Post Office. A simple marble plaque on a wall explains that it is ‘Erected to the Memory of Officers of Woking Post Office who gave their lives in the Great War’. It then goes on to list the names and formations of the dead:

Allen W.G. – Grenadier Guards

Bruce V.E. – Leading Seaman RFR

Coles C.T. – PO Rifles

Goldsmith F.C. – East Kent Regt

Keene T.G. – RE Sigs

Orr D.W. – PO Rifles

Riddiford W.B. – PO Rifles

Urquhart I. – MT RFA

Warner W.J. – RGA

Wise A.J. – Tank Corps

Reflection reveals what an extraordinary historical statement is made by this memorial. A single place of work – a post office in the borough of Woking – lost no fewer than ten of its workers in the years 1914-18. The total staff of the post office would have been unlikely to number more than a few dozen, so their deaths would have sent emotional trauma rippling through the building with every new War Office telegram that arrived. Beyond the walls of the post office, each death would then punch a hole through the lives of wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters; people for whom these names represented humans at the centre of their lives. The war memorial is not just a list of names; it is a testimony to grief on a huge scale.

Of course, that scale gets even bigger depending on the memorial you visit. In terms of the First World War, the human loss is conveyed with almost vertiginous effect by the cemeteries and memorials of Belgium and France. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) tends, with laudable diligence, to such sites across the world, but even their neatness and peace cannot mask the horror of what they represent. For example, the Tyne Cot cemetery in Belgian Flanders is today the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. It contains, in serried, silent ranks, the graves of 11,956 Commonwealth servicemen, 8,369 of them unidentified. To compound the power of this sight, the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing then adds the names of a further 35,000 officers and men whose bodies were not recovered. In nearby Ypres also stands the majestic Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing; its cavernous Hall of Memory features dozens of stone panels, on which are carved the names of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in Flanders. So, in total, these two locations remember more than 100,000 war dead, the deaths incurred in one particular sector of the Western Front in four years of terrible bloodshed.

It is a truism that deaths numbering in the tens of thousands can often have less emotional impact than the death of a single person. And yet, each name given on a wall, each grave tended, does indeed connect to a real person, an individual who once had a beating heart and breathing lungs, and who wondered whether he would reach the end of the day alive.

THE INSTINCT TO REMEMBER

Memorials to wars have always been with us, but their nature has changed profoundly over time. Back in antiquity, we find numerous monumental works celebrating victories (rather fewer remembering defeats), often sculpted or cast to glorify the exploits of a campaigning empire. Imperial Rome was replete with them, and some still stand defiantly today in that city – Trajan’s Column is the most well-known, consisting of 32 tons of marble standing 98ft (30m) high, around which winds 623ft (190m) of frieze depicting scenes of war between the Romans and the Dacians (
CE
101–102 and
CE
105–106). Trajan’s Column went on to inspire dozens of victory columns around the world, but the other popular format for war memorials was the triumphal arch. Triumphal arches not only provided plenty of space for patriotic verses, they also created an avenue through which a victorious army could march in full view of the gathered masses – they were the ultimate public relations monument. Once again, Rome proliferates with such arches, typically labelled with the name of the emperor who secured the victory; great examples include the Arch of Titus and the Arch of Constantine. Another classical way of remembering a war, or at least a victory, was simply to carve an overbearing statue of the relevant ruler or commander, and stand it portentously in a public place. During the fifth century
BCE
and subsequently, for example, Athens would have had more than its fair share of statues of Pericles, who led Athens during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War (431–404
BCE
).