The Remembrance Day poppy
a New Forest memorial day
flower forever.
The most important memorial day in the New Forest, as throughout the UK, is symbolised by the Remembrance Day Poppy.
Throughout the forest, WW1 and WW2 memorials will have these
stunning red poppy displays placed on them as a memorial to all those who lost their lives in both World War One and World
War Two.
Perhaps more significantly today, they are also sold to symbolize and make us reflect on the huge loss of life our Armed Forces are experiencing in Iraq and Afganistan.
If you have your own special family memories which you may like to share whether wartime stories from the past or today, just fill in the form further on down the page.
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This November 2009 on the 8th and 11th, the Trustees of the New Forest Airfields Memorial will welcome anyone who would like to lay a wreath, personal tribute or take part in the observance of silence at the appropriate times on both days.
The New Forest Airfields Enclosure now hosts an American War Memorial to the Pilots of the 404th Fighter Group. The US Memorial Day held throughout the United States each May, is also observed at the New Forest Airfields enclosure in May.
To find out how to get here follow the
New Forest Airfields Memorial directions.
To find out more about all the airfields which this memorial site covers,
Friends of New Forest Airfields
has lots of fascinating information to share with you.
Lots of the information I have been able to share with you has come from the
Royal British Legion
.
They have so much to offer both leading up to Remembrance Day and each Poppy Appeal but also throughout the year.
You might want to
Dedicate a Cross
in memory of a loved one?
Or...
Use their expertise on your special memorial day by getting their
Remembrance Day
advice and expertise to help your day be a memorial day to remember forever.
How did the poppy become the symbol of this special memorial day?
During World War One, complete devastation was experienced on the Flanders and Picardy war zone fields of Belgium and Northern France.
The poppy was the only flower to bloom from the mud of this war zone.
It epitomized new life out of destruction, but also through its brilliant red colour, provided a very poignant memorial to symbolize the carnage and blood letting of these WW1 battles.
The first official Legion Poppy Day was held in Britain on 11 November 1921.
Each year since, throughout the UK, the death and destruction which was experienced by our troops on those Flanders' fields during WW1, has become an annual event in which to remember and reflect on, for all generations since.
John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces wrote this poem, In Flanders' Fields, which sums up what he experienced, first hand as a WW1 medic.
1915 In Flanders' Fields
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.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the First World War ended.
Civilians wanted to remember the people who had given their lives for peace and freedom.
In America, a War Secretary, Moina Michael, inspired by John McCrae's poem, began selling poppies to friends to raise money for the ex-Service community. And so the tradition began.
In England by 1922, Major George Howson, a young infantry officer, had formed the Disabled Society.
At this time there were many disabled ex-Service men and women from the First World War.
Employment was hard to find, and Major Howson suggested to the Legion that members of the Disabled Society could make poppies. The Poppy Factory was subsequently founded in Richmond, Surrey in 1922.
It was designed to be easily assembled by workers with a disability and this principle remains today.
The New Forest has lots of memorial day sites to visit. Leading up to Remembrance Day in November each year, you will see a new array of poignant letters or personal items, which may have been placed beside the beautiful poppy symbol throughout this lovely landscape.
Visit at your leisure, they usually remain all year. They are added to as visitors come from overseas to see where their relatives were stationed or even may have lost their lives during WW1 and WW2.
What special New Forest memorial day memories does your family hold?
Why not share that special New Forest wartime story of WW1 or WW2 that has been part of your family for years? Who knows who you may be able to share a New Forest memorial day memory with?
Read and share what other visitors memories are
Click on the links below to see what other memories have been shared from visitors to this page...
The American Air Force
My sister, whose name was Patricia (Pat)Pidgley, worked in a munitions dump near Romsey somewhere, and one afternoon when she alighted from the works bus ...
MEMORIAL THOUGHTS FROM THE HEART !
As in years past the Month of May is devoted to our BRAVE MEN and WOMEN in the Military. My deep heartfelt THANK YOU to ALL . God bless you and the land ...
School House memories.
Not rated yet
We visited Ibsley Aerodrome with my sister Pat's daughter, Karen, from America, a lovely woman, and we went round to the old control tower, or at least ...
American families visit Ibsley aerodrome
Not rated yet
In the summer of 2009 Corporal Leroy Charles Miller's daughter Karen and her husband George visited Ibsley Aerodrome where their father was stationed during ...
The start of the invasion
Not rated yet
My family lived in the School House in between the church and the school at Godshill, near Fordingbridge, we had moved there from Bournemouth at the commencement ...
Wartime memories of an evacuee
Not rated yet
My aunt was sent to stay with a New Forest family during World War Two.
She found the experience terrifying at first as she had only ever seen dogs and ...
Would you like to visit some New Forest memorial sites?
They range from medieval murdered (or not?) royalty to WW1 and WW2 sites.
Explore my
New Forest memorial page
and find out more about the New Forest and its history.
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