Poppy or cornflower? On November 11, as on every Armistice Day of the First World War, in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth, we will wear the first on our buttonhole, while in France we will hang the second on our lapel. Two flowers for two stories, more parallel than competing.
The two types, Papaver rhoeas etc Cyan crop of their scientific name, possess the same virtue in the eyes of the soldiers from 14 to 18 years: stronger than barbarism, they are the only ones who grow stubbornly in the mud of the trenches, despite the trampling of people and the ravages of shells.
On December 8, 1915, a Canadian military doctor, John Alexander McCrae, published in the magazine British Punch a poem entitled In Flemish Fields. “In the fields of Flanders the poppies bloom/Between the crosses, one row after the other/Mark our place.” The last verses are a call to the living: “If you abandon us, we who die/We will find no rest, even though the poppies bloom/In the fields of Flanders.”
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