the podcast

by Sarah Heath | Armistice Poppies

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This coming Sunday, it will be Armistice Day and this year has a very special significance with it being 100 years since that very first eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day when World War 1 was finally brought to a close. When the Germans agreed to sign the Armistice in an old railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne about 35km north of Paris. In the UK it’s easy to tell that this commemorative date is not so far off as, about two weeks before, everyone starts wearing a red poppy. And here in France, as if spotting a Brit wasn’t easy enough, at this time of year the wearing of the little red flower makes it all the more obvious. There is an equivalent here in France although it is isn’t seen very often. The bleuet, which is the French word for a cornflower, is the French symbol to remember soldiers, victims of war and their families. You’ll see our gorgeous President Macron wearing one on the 11th of November.The cornflower represents delicacy and hope, and as with the poppy, the little blue flowers were the only signs of life in the fields of northern France after fighting obliterated the landscape. The name ‘bleuet’ was also given to soldiers for their blue uniforms as they went off to fight in the war. The name was so well known that Alphonse Bourgoin wrote the following about them in 1916.These here, these little “Bleuets”These Bleuets colour of the skyAre beautiful, gay, stylishBecause they are not afraid.Merrily, go forwardGo on, my friends, so long!Good luck for you, little “blues”Little “bleuets”, you are our hope!A few years later, bleuet badges were sold in a similar scheme to remembrance poppies although the tradition these days is not so widely observed. The badges were the brainchild of a nurse at Les Invalides, who wanted to find a new purpose for injured soldiers who were in rehabilitation, so they were first produced by war veterans in specially organised workshops and this actually pre-dates the production of poppies.Although it seems very British to wear a poppy, the tradition actually came about thanks to four of the countries who helped make up the allied forces: Britain, Canada, the US and France. The inspiration came from the beautiful poem, “In Flanders Fields” which was written in 1915 by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian military doctor. McCrae was moved to write the poem the day after the death of one of his closest friends who was buried, along with many, many others, near the Flanders battlefield. The area  was brought back to life by poppies emerging between the handmade wooden crosses marking the soldiers' graves. This is what McCrae wrote:In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved, and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:To you from failing hands we throwThe torch, be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.The poem set off a chain reaction after it was published in the English magazine 'Punch' which happened to be read by an American lady, Moina Michael,