The Flanders Fields Poppy
The Inspiration
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The Flanders Fields Poppy
The Inspiration
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The Flanders Fields PoppyMoina MichaelInspiration First Sale Memorial Emblem Raising Funds Official Recogniton Tributes Moina's Biography Remembering Poppy Umbrella Hear Last Post 'In Flanders Fields' Armistice Day in Ypres Flanders Memorial Poppy Gardens of Remembrance 1914-1918 ReferenceThe Western FrontThe Ypres Salient Second Battle of Ypres The Somme War Graves Tracing relatives Resources & Links Bibliography PoemsA Soldier's CemeteryIn Flanders Fields In Memoriam We Shall Keep the Faith About the siteWho we areRembrella  |
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9 November 1918The idea for the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy came to Moina Michael while she was working at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries' headquarters on a Saturday morning in November 1918, two days before the Armistice was declared at 11 o'clock on 11 November. The Twenty-fifth Conference of the Overseas YMCA War Secretaries was in progress. On passing her desk, a young soldier left a copy of the November Ladies Home Journal on Moina's desk. (He was the son of A G Kneble, Executive Secretary to the War Personnel Board of National War Workers Council, the governing board of the staff of the YMCA Secretaries for Overseas.)
Reading the poem on this occasion - she had read it many times before - Moina was transfixed by the last verse - "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." In Moina Michael's book 'The Miracle Flower' she described the experience as deeply spiritual, and she felt as though she was actually being called in person by the voices which had been silenced by death.
Compelled to make a note of this pledge she hastily scribbled down a response on the back of a used envelope, entitled "We Shall Keep the Faith". Next page: First Sale of Memorial Poppies Acknowledgements The Miracle Flower, The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy, by Moina Michael Copyright Joanna Legg & Graham Parker © 1999 All rights reserved |
At
about 10.30am, when everyone was on duty elsewhere, Moina found a few
moments to read the magazine. In it she came across a page which carried
a vivid colour illustration for the poem "We Shall Not Sleep" (later named
At that moment
Moina Michael made a personal pledge to 'keep the faith' and vowed
always to wear a red poppy of Flanders Fields as a sign of remembrance
and as an emblem for "keeping the faith with all who died".