How the poppy became a symbol of remembrance, explained by the Royal British Legion at the launch of the East Preston Yarnbombers, giant poppy cascade
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00During the second battle of East, a Canadian medic was working at a gas-threatening station,
00:07which was full of wounded.
00:10He suddenly noticed a good friend had been threatened in,
00:13that there was no room in the concrete bunker.
00:16So he tended in to him as he could, and said,
00:20I will be back to you when there's room.
00:23A short while later, there was an explosion outside,
00:27and when he went out, he found his friend was dead.
00:31Later on, when he went to his funeral,
00:35he noticed how the coffins grew around the grave,
00:39and this moved him greatly.
00:42And that night, he wrote the poem in Flanders Field.
00:46But apparently, he didn't like it, he discarded the poem,
00:50but a friend, a fellow medic, picked it up,
00:53and it was then made to publish in the Punch magazine in December 1915.
01:01Sadly, John McLean died of pneumonia in 1918.
01:07We never got to see the effect of that copy,
01:11which has now been going over a hundred years.
01:14John will read you the poem.
01:18In Flanders Fields, the poppies flow,
01:23Between the crosses, row and row,
01:27That mark our place, and in the sky,
01:30The loft, still gravely, still in flight,
01:33Stares her amidst the gullies below.
01:37We are the day, short days ago,
01:41We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
01:45Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
01:48In Flanders Fields.
01:51Take up our quarrel with the poem,
01:55To you from failing hands we throw,
01:58The torch be yours to hold it high,
02:02If ye break faith with us to die,
02:05We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
02:09In Flanders Fields.
02:15© BF-WATCH TV 2021