In Flanders Field

When I was a little boy, they still called it Armistice Day and marked it on the 11th day of the 11th month of each year.

Now, in the United States, it’s called Veterans Day. Now we remember not just the end of the Great War but the service of all veterans throughout our nation’s history.

I was touched this morning by a short email from a relative. It read “Thank you for your service.”

Well, I was proud to do it.

Perhaps being a veteran is what made me so interested in what the Brits were doing this year to mark the holiday they still call Armistice Day. In a massive undertaking at the Tower of London, they’ve placed 888,246 ceramic poppies -- one for each British fatality in the First World War.

Stunning is not a word I use often. But the result of this project is exactly that: stunning. A sea of blood appears to flow out of a window in the tower and fill the surrounding moat.

For those of you with three minutes to spare on this Veterans Day, here’s a link to a report by Mark Phillips of CBS News in London. (You’ll need to endure a brief commercial before the video starts, but it’s worth it.)

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-flood-of-poppies-in-london/

And here’s a drone’s eye view of the project that aired today on BBC TV.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30004315


In Flanders fields the poppies grow,
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.

---John McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918)