In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place……

and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below……

 

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

 

This most evocative of poems, “In Flanders Fields”, dates back, of course, to the Great War. John McCrae, a Canadian medical officer, was inspired to write it after presiding over the funeral of a fellow soldier who died in the battle of Ypres in May 1915. The poem was first published in Punch magazine later that year. Many were hugely inspired into action by the poem.

These included, at the time, two great women campaigners: Moina Michael, an American, and Anna Guérin, who was French. After the Armistice both started to promote the poppy as the symbol of remembrance and to raise money for the casualties of war: not just the disabled, but for widows and orphans too. In late 1921 Guérin persuaded the then fledgling Royal British Legion to take up her idea of a “Poppy Day”. Initially there was scepticism. But she showed samples of the silk poppies, made in France, and offered to provide the stock. The first ever British Remembrance and Poppy day was held on 11 November 1921.  It was a massive success. The Royal British Legion made £106,000, largely via poppy sales, the equivalent of £5m today. And the poppies sold out.

A key figure in scaling up the early work of the Royal British Legion was a little-known soldier, Major George Arthur Howson, MC. He served on the Western Front with the 11th (Service) Battalion Hampshire Regiment from late 1914 and went on to have an impressive war record: recognized for bravery by saving a man who had fallen into the River Somme in 1916, he was also “mentioned in dispatches’ later that year. Then, on the 31 July 1917, the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres, he was badly wounded in action when in command of troops building machine-gun emplacements by a heavy aerial bombardment. He carried on, encouraging his men, stopping only for treatment hours later once the task was complete. For gallantry and selfless service he was awarded a Military Cross.

After the war Howson committed his life to providing employment for disabled veterans. He became founding chairman of the Disabled Society in 1921. The following year, The Royal British Legion realized the need to have the remembrance poppies made in England rather than France, and commissioned the Disabled Society to do this. Hence, in 1922, Howson set up the very first Poppy Factory on the Old Kent Road in London. Just  5 disabled veterans were employed initially, however the factory expanded rapidly taking on 50 more and producing over a million poppies within months. By November 1924 the Poppy Factory had manufactured over 27 million poppies - all funds going towards “The Legion” for the welfare of veterans and their families - as continues today.  

Although the Royal Hampshire Regiment no longer exists, having amalgamated into the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment in 1992, the story of Howson and so very many others from past conflicts live on at the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum in Winchester and in the other fine Army Museums nearby in Peninsula Barracks.  

Drop in and remember them!