The Flanders Fields Poppy

Remembering

1914-1918 Reference

Poems

About the site

The Poppy Working for Returned Servicemen

During the winter of 1918 Moina Michael continued working for the Staff of the Overseas YMCA Secretaries. She visited wounded and sick men from Georgia who were in nine of the debarkation hospitals in and around New York City, to find what could be done for them other than what the hospitals were doing.

By March 1919 she had moved back to Georgia to take up her place at the University of Georgia. With the return of thousands of ex-servicemen from that time Moina realised that there was not only a need to honour the memory of those who had died in the service of their country, but also a need to remember that those who were returning also had mental, physical and spiritual needs.

During the summer months of 1919 Moina taught a class of disabled servicemen, there being several hundred in rehabilitation at the University of Georgia. Learning about their needs at first hand gave her the impetus to widen the scope of the Poppy idea, to develop it so that it could be used to help all servicemen who needed help for themselves and for their dependents.

In September 1921 delegates at the Auxiliary to the American Legion Convention agreed that disabled American war veterans could make the poppies sold in the United States, thus generating much needed income for veterans who had no other income. The Auxiliary provided all the material and had it pre-cut for forming into flowers.

The American and French Children's League

The expansion of the scope of the Memorial Poppy to raise money for the benefit of those who were suffering as a result of the war was largely due to the work of a French woman, Madame Guérin.

Madame Guérin had been present at the National American Legion Convention in September 1920 when the Memorial Poppy was proclaimed as the United States' national emblem of remembrance. In the name of the American and French Children's League Madame Guérin sold millions of poppies, made by French women, throughout the United States to aid rehabilitation in the areas of France devastated by the First World War.

In 1921 Madame Guérin sent French women to London to sell poppies, which introduced the Memorial Poppy idea to the British. Madame Guérin visited Earl Haig and persuaded him to adopt the Flanders Poppy for the British Legion, which was done in the autumn of 1921.

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Acknowledgements

The Miracle Flower, The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy, by Moina Michael

Copyright Joanna Legg & Graham Parker © 1999 All rights reserved