The Poppy of Remembrance: A History

Artillery shells and shrapnel stirred up the earth and exposed the seeds to the light they needed to germinate. 

Poppies in Gallipoli

photo: 2005 Tim Kantar

A field of Red Poppies, France. The red poppy is NOT the opium poppy.  Poppies grow in nearly every country. California has the Golden Poppy. Poppies grow in the Negev Desert. Photographer: Ian Britton In the years immediately following World War 1, governments and the whole of society, had not accepted the responsibility for those incapacitated and left bereft as a result of war. In Britain, massive unemployment accentuated the problem.

Earl Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, undertook the task of organising the British Legion as a means of coping with the problems of hundreds and thousands of men who had served under him in battle.

In 1921, a group of widows of French ex-servicemen called on him at the British Legion Headquarters. 

They brought with them from France some poppies they had made, and suggested that they might be sold as a means of raising money to aid the distressed among those who were incapacitated as a result of the war. 

The first red poppies to come to Australia, in 1921, were made in France. (See left)

In Australia, single poppies are not usually worn on ANZAC Day - the poppy belongs to Remembrance Day, 11 November. However, wreaths of poppies are traditionally placed at memorials and honour boards on ANZAC Day.

The red Flanders’ poppy was first described as a flower of remembrance by Colonel John McCrea, who was Professor of Medicine at McGill University of Canada before World War One. 

Colonel McCrea had served as a gunner in the Boer War, but went to France in World War One as a medical Officer with the first Canadian Contingent. He was KIA. 

Royal British Legion poppy.

The Anzac Day Difference

• Each poppy was sold for a shilling: five pence was donated to a charity for French children, six pence went to the league's own welfare work and one penny went to the league's national coffers. 

Today, the RSL sells poppies for Remembrance Day to raise funds for welfare work, although they have long since ceased to import them from France. (AWM text).

The Poppy from the NZ perspective.

The association of the red poppy — the Flanders Poppy — with battlefield deaths as a natural symbol of resurrection and remembrance derives from the fact that the poppy was the first plant to grow in the churned up soil of soldiers' graves in the area of Flanders during the First World War.

It was verses by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian Medical Officer, which began the intriguing process by which the Flanders Poppy became immortalised worldwide as the symbol of remembrance:

The inspiration for the verses had been the death of a fellow officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery, on 2 May 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres (Ieper) in western Belgium, for whom McCrae had performed the burial service. McCrae's verses, which he had scribbled in pencil on a page torn from his despatch book, were sent anonymously by a fellow officer to the English magazine, Punch, and published under the title “In Flanders Fields” on 8 December 1915. Three years later, McCrae himself died of pneumonia at Wimereux near Boulogne, France, on 28 January 1918. On his deathbed, McCrae reportedly lay down the challenge: Tell them this, if ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep.

Among the many people moved by McCrae's poem a YMCA canteen worker in New York, Miss Moina Michael (1869-1944), who, two days before the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, wrote a reply entitled “We Shall Keep the Faith”. Moina Michael hereafter tirelessly campaigned to get the poppy adopted as a national symbol of remembrance in the United States. In September 1920 the American Legion adopted the Poppy at its annual Convention. Attending that Convention was a French woman who was about to promote the poppy — as a symbol of remembrance — throughout the world.

Madame E. Guérin, conceived the idea of widows manufacturing artificial poppies in the devastated areas of Northern France which then could be sold by veterans' organisations worldwide for their own veterans and dependants as well as the benefit of destitute French children. Throughout 1920-21, Guérin and her representatives approached veteran organisations' in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and urged them to adopt the poppy as a symbol of remembrance. It was as a result of the efforts of Michael and Guérin — both of whom became known endearingly as the "Poppy Lady" — that the poppy became an international symbol of remembrance.

One of Guérin's representatives, Colonel Alfred Moffatt, came to put the poppy initiative to the New Zealand Returned Solders' Association (as the RNZRSA was originally known) in September 1921 and an order for some 350,000 small and 16,000 large silk poppies was duly placed with Madame Guérin's French Children's League.

In common with veteran organisations in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the RSA had intended to hold its inaugural Poppy Appeal in association with Armistice Day 1921 (11 November 1921). However, the ship carrying the poppies from France arrived in New Zealand too late for the scheme to be properly publicized prior to Armistice Day, thereby forcing the RSA to postpone its Poppy campaign until the day prior to ANZAC Day 1922. Thus Poppy Day, as it was immediately known, became uniquely associated with ANZAC Day, whereas in Australia, as with the United Kingdom and Canada, the appeal continued to be associated with Armistice Day.

The first Poppy Day in New Zealand, 24 April 1922, was met with great public enthusiasm, with many centres selling out of their supply of poppies early in the day. The NZRSA declared the inaugural Poppy Day a "brilliant success". In all, 245,059 small poppies were sold for 1 shilling each and 15,157 larger versions of the flower attracted two shillings each, netting the national association, after all expenses, £13,166. Of that sum, £3,695 was sent to French Children's League to help alleviate distress in the war-ravaged areas of Northern France. The remainder was used by the RSA to assist unemployed returned soldiers in need, and their families, during the winter of 1922. So began a tradition of the Poppy Day Appeal as the RSA's primary means of raising funds for the welfare of returned service personnel and their dependants.

In 1931 the NZRSA began producing its own poppies, made by disabled returned men at Auckland and Christchurch RSA. By the end of the 1930s, Christchurch RSA was even making an oversized Poppy for motor vehicles. Christchurch RSA is still responsible for the manufacture of poppies in New Zealand.

During the Second World War patriotism and public interest to remember the recent war dead resulted in record-breaking collections on Poppy Day. By 1945, 750,000 poppies were being distributed nationwide, which equates to half the population wearing the familiar red symbol of remembrance. So important was the Appeal deemed that the Government expressed no qualms about granting the necessary wartime permit for the imported British cloth. Poppy Day was set to serve the welfare needs of another generation of returned service personnel and their dependants in the postwar period.

After over 80 years, few appeals can claim the history and public recognition as that of the RSA's Poppy Day Appeal. In fact, as much as the RSA Badge, the Poppy is the recognizable symbol of the RSA and its endeavours to care for war veterans as well as remember those who never returned.

The Poppy is not only visible on Poppy Day and ANZAC Day, and other commemorative occasions, but at funerals of returned servicemen and women. It is also taken on pilgrimages to be laid at New Zealand war memorials and war graves around the world. The RSA Poppy is truly a national icon.

Canadian Poppy quarter (25 cents)

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