Ken Steele wrote:
The veneration is not just a Commonwealth habit. The wearing of silk
poppies on Veterans Day (aka Armistice Day) was common in my area of
the Southern USA when I was a youth.
A 100,000 dead in a single battle--approaching the inconceivable.
Pardon my error. It was 100,000 *casualties* at the Second Battle of
Ypres. Many of these were wounded rather than killed. And it was
chlorine gas rather than mustard gas. In the first gas attack, it is
said that 6000 French soldiers died in ten minutes.
Catastrophic as it was, it was a mere skirmish compared to the Third
Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), which saw 850,000 casualties over a
four-month period.
Regards,
Christopher "Parahippocampal Failure" Green
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Christopher D. Green wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I could swear that while growing up on the Caribbean Island of
St.Lucia,we had a holiday called Poppy Day and we actually sold
poppies. Obviously,it must have been a British thing.Is this same as
Armistice day or Veterans day as celebrated today in the U.S? And
why a poppy flower? Anything to do with opium?
Poppies are the primary symbol of Remembrance Day (Nov 11) as it is
known in Canada. The reason has to do with a Canadian
soldier-doctor-poet John McCrae who wrote the poem "In Flanders
Fields" in honor of the dead at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915
(see http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm for the poems full
text). In this battle, at which the Germans introduced mustard gas
into their arsenal, about 100,000 men were killed on both sides.
McCrae was died of pneumonia in 1918, before the end of the war.
Regards,
Christopher "Hippocampus" Green
York U.
Toronto
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