In the United States, National Poppy Day is celebrated on the Friday before Memorial Day. This year it is observed on May 24.

On this day people wear red poppies to honor fallen veterans and support living heroes who have worn our nation’s uniform. The red poppy symbolizes sacrifices made by veterans to protect the country’s freedoms.

Along the National Mall in Washington D.C., poppies are arranged to honor the estimated 645,000 U.S. men and women who have given their lives on the battlefield.

Two women are credited for leading the charge to make the poppy a symbol of war’s sacrifices. Monica Michael, a volunteer at the New York YWCA, worked fervently to make the poppy the official remembrance flower of the U.S. spending most of the little money she had to promote it.

Across the ocean in France, wealthy widow Anna Guerin was working to make it an international symbol of military sacrifice, and soon England, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand joined France in honoring the crimson red flower.

Thanks to Michael’s urging, the poppy became the official flower of the American Legion in 1920. The group furthered its message by launching a national distribution program four years later.

John McCrae’s 1915 poem “In Flanders Field” is often referenced when Poppy Day is observed and believed to have been the catalyst for Michael’s and Guerin’s work to create the day of remembrance.

McCrae was a young Canadian soldier-surgeon when he crouched in a foxhole, looking out at the fields of Belgian Flanders where poppies covered a nearby cemetery where he had recently buried a young soldier. While the poem is beloved by many, early critics felt it unfairly compelled young men to go to war, often losing their lives on the battlefield. However, it is often quoted at Memorial Day observances and carries the listener to the red-flowered fields far away, where poppies sway in the breeze over the graves of young men.

The flowers are no longer made solely by veterans, and an estimated 45 million are produced by a London factory and distributed in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Those poppies have two petals and a single leaf. Scotland produces 5 million poppies, with four petals and no leaves or stems. In the U.S., 80 million are distributed and the flowers can have four to six petals and a white ribbon printed with, “In Memoriam.”

The poppy’s style is important. The crimson petals, representing the blood shed by veterans, are bound by a wire stem to mimic the barbed wire soldiers confronted during the war on the Western Front. Poppies should be worn on the left side of a shirt, blouse or jacket, and near the heart. Poppies can be kept from year to year, but an annual donation is appreciated.

Millions are given out by Legion volunteers and donations received from here and abroad go to help wounded veterans and their families. The American Legion provides poppy kits for volunteers of all ages who make the flowers for distribution.

No matter how you view Dr. McCrae’s poem, its haunting beauty is memorable.

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae

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.