Poppies, broken faith & failed promises

Today, the Friday before Memorial Day, is National Poppy Day --- and I've plucked one this morning, admittedly grown another year when spring was more advanced, from the museum garden.

Established at the behest of the American Legion Auxiliary in 1920, the inspiration for Poppy Day was "In Flanders Fields," the wartime poem of Canadian John McCrae, World War I soldier and physician and poet. 

The poppy has since become a symbol of remembrance for those who died while in service to the United States during all wars --- although less so here than in the nations of the World War II-era British Commonwealth where Remembrance Day is observed on Nov. 11.

The poem memorializes the April 1915 battle in Belgium’s Ypres salient where for 17 days McCrae tended those injured in the battle. The poem was written after the death of a close friend. McCrae himself died Jan. 18, 1918, age 45, of pneumonia while working at a military hospital in Boulogne. 

Here's the text of the poem:

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.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

The torch was tossed to me and others of my generation I suppose by the 58,000 who died for no particular reason, as it turned out, in Vietnam.

I was fortunate enough to be a Saigon warrior, in no particular danger, but remember too clearly some days the aluminum body transfer cases stacked like cord wood and awaiting their cargo at the U.S. Army Mortuary on Tan Son Nhut, just across a field and a fence from my battalion headquarters. I also remember faces and names.

We've not done a good job of carrying that torch forward and have collectively broken faith with the dead. We're reaping a bitter harvest now. And I'm sorry.