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Remembrance

2. The history of poppies

Why do we wear poppies?

(Teacher's note: You can view all these small thumbnail images together as a gallery of larger images, which opens in a new window. This will allow you to print out the pictures and talk through the images with a class.)

Look at the picture on the right. What is pop star Billie Piper wearing? Have you ever worn a poppy?

Colour photograph of Billie Piper holding a basket of poppies. [Opens in new window: image size 20kb]

Wearing a poppy
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[Reproduced with kind permission of Shropshire Newspapers]

A long time ago World War One started. It started in 1914. Many soldiers from Britain and around the world fought in the war.

Most of the fighting happened in France and Belgium.

Sepia photograph showing a column of soldiers marching through a street with rifles [Opens in new window: image size 21kb]

Soldiers marching through Oswestry, going off to war
Larger image, in a new window [21kb]
[Oswestry Library]

The fields where soldiers fought were very muddy. This is what it looked like to the soldiers. Would you like to fight here?

Sepia postcard showing a wasted landscape of destroyed trees, mud and trenches. [Opens in new window: image size 13kb]

A postcard from France
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[Shropshire Archive reference: KSLI Scrapbook]

Poppies grew in the fields during the war. The soldiers were very happy to see the poppies. One soldier wrote a poem about it.
He said:

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
(John McCrae)

Flanders is a place in Belgium. A big battle happened at Flanders. The soldiers saw that the poppies were growing. Poppies became a sign of hope.

World War One ended in 1918. When people stop fighting this is called a cease fire. When World War One ended, people were very happy.

The end of World War One was a special cease fire. It happened on the Eleventh Hour, of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh month. That means 11:00am, on 11 November, in 1918 the guns stopped firing.

This cease fire was called Armistice Day.

A photograph of a group of schoolchildren waving flags [Opens in new window: image size 27kb]

Peace celebrations at Cockshutt School, 1918
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[Shropshire Archive reference: LS 154.24]

Soldiers who fought in the war are called veterans. Many of them were disabled or injured in the fighting.

After the war a lady called Moina Michael had the idea of selling poppies. The money she raised would help these soldiers and their families. She wrote:

And now the torch and poppy red
Wear in honour of our dead.

Disabled veterans made paper poppies. They sold them to raise money for charity.

Photograph of a group of about 50 veterans sitting in a pub courtyard [Opens in new window: image size 18kb]

War veterans in Ellesmere on Armistice Day, 1921
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[Shropshire Archive reference: LS 150.14]

We wear poppies every year to remember the end of World War One. Since World War One, there have been other wars. Poppies also remember soldiers and people who have died in these wars, or conflicts. When we buy a poppy, we raise money for veterans who fought in World War One and other wars.

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Page created October 2003 and last updated 30 July 2007

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