AN EARLY REMEMBRANCE POPPY

THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN OBJECTS NO.52

An early/interwar Haig Fund Poppy seller. The image was taken in Crewkerne, Somerset.
(ALL IMAGES HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
An early example of a fabric and card Haig Fund Remembrance Poppy. This is believed to be a wartime economy version that was issued from 1942 until 1944.

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.

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