'We shall not sleep, though poppies grow' is a line taken from the poem "In Flanders Fields" by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae and here it is in full:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow We are the Dead. Short days ago John McCrae wrote it on 2 May, 1915, upon a scrap of paper shortly after his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by a German artillery shell. This was happened in the second week of fighting during the second battle of Ypres, First World War. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts. The poppy was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921. |
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