To have been 32 and cycling through poppy fields in France before the penny fucking dropped!

[NeverGhoul]

There I am pedalling along this summer through poppy fields in northern France when I had a sort of moment of clarity re: the whole wearing a poppy thing. I never got the link til then. Only took 32 years.

AIBU or just a bit dim and unquestioning?

OK, what is the significance of the yellow daffodil?

YANBU. I was an adult when the penny dropped that the Romans came from Italy.

i have no idea about yellow daffodils. educate me.

Don't know about the daffodil, but the poppy is apparently so logical, so presuming daffodil would be as well.....

brilliant earwicga. i don't feel so bad now.

Yellow daffodils are sold by the hospice movement aren't they to raise funds? No link to poppies that I know of

But WHY yellow daffodils

The French(i believe) use the Bluet,the blue cornflower for Remembrance day.

our van nearly left the road while the driver and i were being overawed by the cornflower fields.
both very impressive.

You're welcome NeverGhoul. I couldn't believe I had never linked the two!

Thank you NG, BB :)

I think it's great to read discussions about the significance of poppies and Rememberance Day.

After all, it's all about "Lest we forget".

well, just to put things in perspective I never realised there were Dinosaurs in England until I went to the Jurassic coast. I thought dinosaurs were foreign.
I always knew about poppies though, because of the poem.

Aren't polar bears from the North pole?

er yes they are pinkjello, but we're overlooking it as this is a 'be kind to dim people' thread.

Have you not seen the film "Oh what a lovely war"?. Fabulous biting satire. Blackadder stole its final scene from this film in my opinion. Both made me cry though.

It took me ages to realise that the ancient Romans came from Italy too Earwig :o they are usually portrayed as more Ray Winstone than Ray Romano.

I was in 2nd yr uni when disbelieving DH explained to me that the story of Icarus flying too close to the Sun was not actually true.

complexnumber - I agree. We should.

I went to a boys boarding at age 11 and there was a library specially built a memorial to the former pupils boys who died in WW1.

The library was lined from floor to ceiling with hundreds of small wooden panels. Each bearing the name of a former pupil and usually with the rank of Lieutenant. Literally, nearly every single boy who left the school for 4 years was killed as they mainly became the young officers who led the men over the top. It had a great effect on me. I always think of that library on Rememberance Day.

Timeforanap...what were you doing at university?

icarus, that's another good one.
you do know thor doesn't actually wave his hammer to cause thunder?

My great grandfather was listed as a deserter during WWI and my great grandmother was spat at in the street for years.

His body was finally found in NoMansLand in 1921 in the German trenches. He was identified by his dog tags. This was in on the France/Belgium border. He had infiltrated the German trenchs and shot in the head.

He has a plaque in Westminster Abbey named for him.

He wrote a poem

My wife, my life

My love, my all

I promised you a house

I promised you children

I promised you a dog and roses up the wall

I promised you the kissing tree

Where we would kiss for ever all

I promised you I would come back

I cannot promise that at all.

He never came back. But left my grandmother

That is so sad,not just the poem but your poor Great Grandmother.

moraldecftive

Makes me cry - she lost her mother in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1917 then took care of her younger siblings at the age of eight.

Both of her brothers died in WW2 along with my uncles on my fathers side. My great Uncle was a prisoner of war in Malaysia and his other brother was in the Norwegian Resistance. He married a Norwegian girl. He was shot dead in a small village in the north of Tromso.

Because of war my entire family consists of three people. My mother, my father and my brother. My mother's first fiance died in Korea in the 1950's.

I wear a poppy because my family have given too much.

I cannot suppport war in any shape or form.