Poppies growing in a field in the Meuse-Argonne Great War battlefield in France

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Long before the Great War, the red poppy had become a symbol of death, renewal and life. The seeds of the flower can remain dormant in the earth for years, but will blossom spectacularly when the soil is churned. Beginning in late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders became the scene of stupendous disturbances. Red Poppies soon appeared. In 1915, at a Canadian dressing station north of Ypres on the Essex Farm, an exhausted physician named Lt. Col. John McCrae would take in the view of the poppy strewn Salient and experience a moment of artistic inspiration. The veteran of the South African War was able to distill in a single vision the vitality of the red poppy symbol, his respect for the sacrifice made by his patients and dead comrades, and his intense feeling of obligation to them. McCrae would capture all of this in the most famous single poem of the First World War, In Flanders Fields.

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Size: 3252px × 5016px
Location: Argonne France
Photo credit: © Niall Ferguson / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

Keywords: 11th, flower, flowers, france, great, november, passchendaele, poppies, poppy, red, remembrance, somme, usa, war, ypres