Born with a curiosity that makes me want to know more about the world around me, I constantly go on the search for answers to questions that form in my mind. With the recent Veterans Day, I began wondering why poppies have become the popular icon. This is what I found:
The red poppy worn around the world in remembrance of battlefield deaths has nothing to do with the blood shed in the brutal clashes of World War I.
Instead it symbolizes the wild flowers that were the first plants to grow in the churned-up soil of soldiers' graves in Belgium and northern France. Little else could grown in blasted soil that became rich in lime from the rubble.
Their paper-thin red petals were the first signs of life and renewal, and in 1915 inspired Canadian doctor John McCrae to pen perhaps the most famous wartime poem:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row ...
It was this poem which inspired an American war secretary to sell the first poppies to raise money for ex-soldiers.
(Information from the BBC News magazine)
