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| | From: TipsyCad147 (Original Message) | Sent: 11/11/2007 8:54 AM |
November is poppy month, the time of the year when by the wearing of a simple emblem, a red poppy, we salute the memory of those who sacrificed their health, their strength, even their lives, that we might live in a free country. Long known as the corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) because it flourishes as a weed in grain fields, the Flanders poppy as it is now usually called, grew profusely in the trenches and craters of the war zone. Artillery shells and shrapnel stirred up the earth and exposed the seeds to the light they needed to germinate. Today the poppy is worn on Remembrance Day, the 11th of November. At 11 o’clock on that day, everyone is asked to be silent for just one minute. The silence is a chance to remember all those who have died in wars and to be glad that we are not at war today. 11th November 1919 The First Two Minute Silence in London: The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all. ~~From the Manchester Guardian, 12th November 1919.~~ LET US PRAY - - We remember Lord, we remember: we remember ships tossed in the air by explosions, we remember men, our friends, falling beside us.... we remember telegrams coming to the doors of our neighbours, husbands taken from our arms never to return; sons whom we feared for every day. We remember a lot, we remember.... - Loving Father - help us in our memories - ease us in the pain of them, without causing us to forget. - Lord God - we remember the costs, remind us too of the victory - of what was won by our comrades and by fellow countrymen; - And finally Lord God - be with all those who are facing war this day - our men and woman at sea and on land and in the air in the mid-east; and be with the rulers of this world and all the world's citizens, that we may learn and live the way of peace with justice, we ask it Jesus' name - AMEN THE RED FLANDERS POPPY. The red Flanders�?poppy was first described as a flower of remembrance by Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918), who was Professor of Medicine at McGill University of Canada before World War One. Colonel McCrae had served as a gunner in the Boer War, but went to France in World War One as a medical Officer with the first Canadian Contingent. At the second battle of Ypres in 1915, when in charge of a small first-aid post, he wrote in pencil on a page torn from his despatch book: "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them, we will remember them" http://homepages.tesco.net/derek.berger/holidays/remembrance.html Assembled by Marmie @ A & M Background Retreat | |
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"At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them, we will remember them" Shanti, OM Shanti |
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