The
first official Legion Poppy Day was held in Britain on 11
November 1921, inspired by the poem In Flanders' Fields written
by John McCrae. Since then the Poppy Appeal has been a key
annual event in the nation's calendar.
How the
Poppy Appeal began
Some of the
bloodiest fighting of World War One took place in the Flanders
and Picardy regions of Belgium and Northern France. The poppy
was the only thing which grew in the aftermath of the complete
devastation. McCrae, a doctor serving there with the Canadian
Armed Forces, deeply inspired and moved by what he saw, wrote
these verses:
In Flanders'
Fields
John McCrae, 1915
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.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh
day of the eleventh month in 1918, the First World War ended.
Civilians wanted to remember the people who had given their
lives for peace and freedom. An American War Secretary, Moina
Michael, inspired by John McCrae's poem, began selling poppies
to friends to raise money for the ex-Service community. And so
the tradition began.
The Poppy
Factory
In
1922, Major George Howson, a young infantry officer, formed the
Disabled Society, to help disabled ex-Service men and women from
the First World War. Howson suggested to the Legion that members
of the Disabled Society could make poppies and the Poppy Factory
was subsequently founded in Richmond in 1922. The original poppy
was designed so that workers with a disability could easily
assemble it and this principle remains today.
The
first official Legion Poppy Day was held in Britain on 11
November 1921, inspired by the poem In Flanders' Fields written
by John McCrae. Since then the Poppy Appeal has been a key
annual event in the nation's calendar. 
In
1922, Major George Howson, a young infantry officer, formed the
Disabled Society, to help disabled ex-Service men and women from
the First World War. Howson suggested to the Legion that members
of the Disabled Society could make poppies and the Poppy Factory
was subsequently founded in Richmond in 1922. The original poppy
was designed so that workers with a disability could easily
assemble it and this principle remains today. 
