Today I remember my maternal grandfather, Chandos Hoskyns who was commissioned into The Rifle Brigade [Greenjackets] in 1914. During The Great War, he fought in Thessaloniki, Greece, and in the trenches of France from where he sent the following letter in which he tells his family about something surprising and unusual.
In response to Major John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Field, Moina Bell Michael wrote the following excerpt:
That blood of heroes never dies, But lends a lustre to the red Of the flower that blooms above the dead In Flanders’ Fields. And now the torch and poppy red Wear in honour of our dead Fear not that ye have died for naught We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught In Flanders’ Fields.
We didn’t learn the lesson, but Moina began the custom of wearing a red poppy to remember ‘the blood of heroes’.
Starting as an American tradition, it soon became adopted in Great Britain. Anyone in the limelight not wearing a poppy pin has caused a scandal (even recently in the news).
Read more about the history and dos and don'ts of poppy etiquette HERE.
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. – Happy Remembrance Day!
Private Walter William Flanders E Company 1st Battalion Hertfordshire Regiment. Walter and three other men were killed in action when their trench took a direct hit, burying an entire section near Shrewsbury Forest, Zillebeke, Belgium on 19th November 1914. Walter had only arrived on the Western Front on 5th November and had been in the front lines for less than 48 hours. He was 19 years old.
