THE STORY OF THE
POPPY
\ Every year on the Saturday
lit before Memorial Day millions
t) of Americans wear little red
•^oppiestJn—tneir coats, ’"omen of the Amer
ican legion Auxiliary and other women’s
organizations are on the streets all day
with baskets of poppies,'pinning the littls
flowers on all nassersby. Of course you
know that the poppies are worn in memory
of the meii who lost their lives in the
’Torid 77ar, but I wonder if you all know
how the poppy came to be the nation’s
memorial flower.
Take your geographies and on the map of
Europe‘draw a wavy line from the Swiss
border, through France and Belgium, to the
Torth Sea. Imagine this line to be a dou
ble line of trenches, and picture vast
armies on both sides of it locked in a
four-year conflict. That is the way Eur
ope looked from 1914 to the fall of 1918.
The line waved first one way and then the
other as the contending armies pushed for
ward or were driven back. For miles on
both sides of it the ground was trampled
by the heavy shoes of millions of fighting
men. It was churned and reclaimed by the
shells of thousands of cannon, blown full'
of ugly craters by the explosion of mines,
and bleached by clouds of poison gas.
Into this area of death^nd destruction
hundreds of thousands of American boys ad
vanced in 1917 and 1916, determined to put
and end to the terrible vrar. As the Amer
ican soldiers struggled forward through
the shattered villages, across the shell
torn fields and over the blasted hillsides
they saw only one touch of life and beauty
in all that region where death and destruc
tion reigned. This was the little wild
popnies. Along the edges of the trenches,
about the ragged shell holes and'in the
fields raked by machine- gun fire, the
brave little poppies grew and bloomed.
'“hen comrades were left beneath the bare
dirt of hastily dug battle graves, the
nop-ies sprang up and clothed the graves
with flovrers. It seemed as if the gallant
spirit, of the dead had passed into the
blood-red blossoms and that through the
little flowers they were sending a message
of courage and hope to those.who still
lived.
The poppy has become the symbol of the
dead—their memorial flower. It has be
come the sign that the high ideals for
which these brave young men gave'their
lives still live and are honored. That is
why we pin on the poppy when we pay tri
bute to our dead of the two Torld Tars,
The poppy covers the sdil in France
beneath which they lie, and on Poppy Day
we place the flower over our hearts, where
the memory of the great sacrifice they gave
for our country is forever enshrined.
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