THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN OBJECTS NO.52
(ALL IMAGES HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
It was Colonel John McCrae who, while in charge of a small first aid post at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, found time to pen the now famous short poem In Flanders Fields with its immortal lines, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row”. Moina Michael, a professor at the University of Georgia in the USA, was so moved that she began to wear a poppy as a symbol of remembrance – and encouraged others to do the same.