Remembrance Sunday

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK; services and parades are being held at Cenotaphs and War Memorials all around the country.  Remembrance Day (Armistice Day) or Veterans' Day in the USA is on Tuesday 11th..

Poppy Cascade, MetroCentre Gateshead. Photo by MMB

     "We Shall Keep the Faith."  (November1918)

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

But lends a lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of the dead,

Fear not that ye have died for nought,

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought

In Flanders Fields.

Written by Moina Belle Michael (1869-1944)  US professor and humanitarian who conceived the idea of using poppies as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in World War 1.

The poem was inspired after reading John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Field"  (see my blog of November 11th.2013)

White Poppy for Peace