The Origins of The Poppy - Remembrance Day

The origins of the poppy came from a poem penned by a Canadian Colonel who had been inspired by the plants that symbolically flowered blood red throughout the shattered Western Front landscape.


Following the poem’s publication in Punch magazine, an American teacher saw Colonel John McCrae’s poem and had the idea of selling poppies to raise money for ex-servicemen and woman who had suffered as a result of the War. The first official Poppy Day in Britain was held in 1921 and raised a staggering £106,000 (3.5 million in today’s money). The following year Major George Howson MC, who served in the Great War, founded the disabled society and arranged with the Legion for unemployed ex-service personnel to make artificial poppies from a small factory, and so the British tradition of purchasing a poppy for Remembrance was born.

The British Legion became ‘The Royal British Legion’ in 1971, in recognition for 50 years of supporting the nation’s servicemen, women and their families. Although the type of support has developed considerably over the years, the mission to stand shoulder to shoulder with all who serve remains unchanged.

Today the Royal British Legion is one of the country’s largest membership organisations with some 370,000 members nationwide and a further 11,000 overseas. Anyone who has served in the Armed Forces for at least seven days or is a dependant of someone who has served the qualifying period is eligible for assistance and the Legion remains dedicated to reaching out to around 500,000 of those in greatest need.

Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was an officer in the 2nd Battery, 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery. He had become good friends with John McCrae. On the morning of Sunday 2 May Alexis left his dugout and was killed instantly by a direct hit from an 8 inch German shell. What body parts could be found were later gathered into sandbags and laid in an army blanket for burial that evening.

Alexis was 22 years old and a popular young officer. Before the outbreak of war he had graduated from McGill University with a degree in Civil Engineering. He was the son of Elizabeth I. Helmer of 122, Gilmour Street, Ottawa, and the late Brigadier General R. A. Helmer.

Near to the 1st Canadian Brigade's position on the canal bank there was a small burial ground which had originally been established by the French Army in the autumn of 1914, the previous year, during the First Battle of Ypres. Several months later the Second Battle of Ypres began on 22 April 1915. By early May 1915 the burial ground contained the graves of French and Canadian Army casualties. It became known as Essex Farm British Military Cemetery, after the farm in the vicinity named as Essex Farm on British military maps.

Lieutenant Helmer was buried on 2 May. In the absence of the chaplain, Major John McCrae conducted a simple service at the graveside, reciting from memory some passages from the Church of England's “Order of Burial of the Dead”. A wooden cross marked the burial place. The grave has since been lost. Lieutenant Alexis Helmer is now commemorated on Panel 10 of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres; he is one of the 54,896 soldiers who have no known grave in the battlefields of the Ypres Salient.

It is thought that doctor John McCrae (30 November 1872 - 28 January 1918) began the draft for his famous poem “In Flanders Fields” on the evening of the 2 May, 1915 in the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres.

John McCrae was serving as a Major and a military doctor and was second in command of the 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery. The field guns of his brigade's batteries were in position on the west bank of the Ypres-Yser canal, about two kilometres north of Ypres. The brigade had arrived there in the early hours of 23 April 1915.

It is believed that the death of his friend, Alexis Helmer, was the inspiration for McCrae's poem “In Flanders Fields”. The exact details of when the first draft was written may never be known because there are various accounts by those who were with McCrae at that time.

One account says that he was seen writing the poem the next day, sitting on the rear step of an ambulance while looking at Helmer's grave and the vivid red poppies that were springing up amongst the graves in the burial ground.
Another account says that McCrae was so upset after Helmer's burial that he wrote the poem in twenty minutes in an attempt to compose himself.
A third account by his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Morrison, states that John told him he drafted the poem partly to pass the time between the arrival of two groups of wounded at the first aid post and partly to experiment with different variations of the poem's metre.

On January 28, 1918, while still commanding No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne, McCrae died of pneumonia with "extensive pneumococcus meningitis". He was buried the following day in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission section of Wimereux Cemetery, just a couple of kilometres up the coast from Boulogne, with full military honours. His flag-draped coffin was borne on a gun carriage and the mourners – who included Sir Arthur Currie and many of McCrae's friends and staff – were preceded by McCrae's charger, "Bonfire", with McCrae's boots reversed in the stirrups. Bonfire was with McCrae from Valcartier, Quebec until his death and was much loved. McCrae's gravestone is placed flat, as are all the others in the section, because of the unstable sandy soil.