Who's got a Remembrance Day poppy?

[Canadian_moderate]

I love Canada's poppy tradition. What a wonderful way to show our thanks to true heros and warriors for freedom and democracy.

I feel better now! :)

[achtung_circus]

1. Always

and I like the new quarter with the red poppy. Rumour says that the red wears off fairly quickly, though.

I sold poppies for years when I was a Boy Scout and an Air Cadet. That, plus school assemblies with the Last Post and Abide With Me and the fact it's my birthday are ongoing November memories for me.

On edit: I went looking for a picture. Thje Royal Canadian Mint images won't copy, but you can see it there (here).

<http://www.rcmint.ca/poppy/home.asp>

[iverglas]

2. just cleaned the bathroom and kitchen

(a less than annual event around here) and found them in corners, under furniture ... I'm sure there'll be more when I get to the living room.

What I wish I had is one of the beautiful ones we used to get when I was a kid, and probably up until about 15 years ago.

They were made of red felt cloth -- a lovely dark red, more crimson and less neon/orange than the modern fuzzy-plastic things. And the bent pin that went into your lapel to hold it on also held the black felt circle in the middle of the red poppy, a four-petalled affair.

We're fortunate to be able to honour the services performed by our military without (for the most part ... there's Somalia ...) less than honourable actions getting in the way.

Of course, we collectively deserve credit for that fact. But as individuals, we're fortunate in ways that individuals USAmericans who denounce the bad things done by their military but would like to honour their military for the good things it has done aren't.

Most USAmericans don't seem to have any connection to November 11. But about 15 years ago, I happened to be in a small town in Florida at the 11th hour, and watched as a very small group of aging veterans held a ceremony and an equally small group of accidental onlookers looked on. One, a young woman, asked me what it was all about.

Thinking back, I should have offered to recite Flander's Field. Of course, that would be assuming that I could. I almost can.

Here's a nice thing I hadn't seen before:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm
The poem, and the background story, on a private website in the US.

I'm also quite fond of the other standard reading (also quoted at that site):

They shall not grow old,
As we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them:
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning,
We will remember them!
http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/binyon.htm


A side note, again -- if anybody here has family or friends who were killed while serving in wartime in the Canadian forces, the Books of Remembrance are available on line (and a copy of the page where the name is recorded, with all the gilt and colour, can be ordered free of charge, at least last I heard). As well, all sorts of info about soldiers in the world wars is available on line. I recently printed off a copy, for my mother, of my great-uncle's handwritten enrolment form for service in WWI, where he was killed about 3 weeks before the Armistice, and also of the form for his younger brother, who was not killed, and who she hadn't known was in the war. There is information about precisely where members of the Cdn forces are buried in Europe, and maps of the cemeteries. My great-uncle is in the cemetery in Étaples, France, which for some reason isn't listed here: http://www.firstworldwar.com/today/index.htm

Links to this stuff are here: http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general

They generally start at the Canadian Virtual War Memorial:
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=collections/virtualmem

Search for names of the dead here:
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=collections/virtualmem

It returns a page "In memory of" the person in question, with a link to the relevant page of the Books of Remembrance. Here's mine:



The Books of Remembrance: http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=collections/books

Worth a brief look even if you don't have family in them.

[yvr girl]

3. I love our poppy tradition

I always make a point of watching the Remembrance Day Service in Ottawa. I think it's so moving.

[whirlygigspin]

10. here ya go

http://www.cbc.ca/MRL/clips/rm-lo/lawand_remember041111.rm

[auntAgonist]

4. In Flander's Fields

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm

I don't think I've ever seen poppies for sale here in Michigan :(
Used to get them from the Legion and when my son was an Air Cadet in Waterloo Ont.

[iverglas]

5. the DU avatar for you

Just saw it on someone's post:

[Swede]

6. I do.

It is a great tradition.

[Spazito]

7. Haven't got my new one yet...

haven't seen anyone selling them yet but will have one before Nov 11, I do have my poppy avitar thanks to iverglas tho.

[Hand]

8. I've had three of the goddam things this time around...

and of course the first two fell off within, oh, half an hour of purchasing them. The third is only staying on because I bent the pin into a fish-hook.

Oh well, all for a worthy cause; if the War Amps' motto is "Never Again!", I guess I can put up with all this.

:hi:

[HEyHEY]

9. Natch!