November 11, 2016

How the common corn poppy — Papaver rhoeas — came to be the symbol of remembrance for those killed in The Great War is easy to comprehend. The scarlet flowers typically grow in disturbed soil and sprang up across Europe after the Napoleonic wars in the 19th Century. They returned again after vast areas of the continent were devastated during World War I. But it's Canadian medical officer John McCrae who transformed this simple plant with his poem, "In Flanders Field".

The poppy's association with WWI gradually grew to represent the fallen from all wars. I always used to see men selling bright red paper poppies in November when I was a little girl, but it's a rarity today — at least in this country. Poppies are still the sign of war and remembrance in the UK; to a great degree because the culture and community at large have maintained the tradition, or so it seems to me.

Somewhere in the 1960s I think our tradition in the U.S. changed — or maybe it was just that I changed. I suddenly noticed one flower in particular appearing in a new military context. The flower was the common oxeye daisy that lines roadsides here. LBJ famously used an image of a little girl pulling petals off a daisy chanting "he loves me, he loves me not." His 1964 U.S. Presidential campaign ad sparked outrage when it ended with the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb suggesting Sen. Barry Goldwater, LBJ's opponent, had a trigger-happy finger.

A few years later the daisy began to make dramatic appearances in an anti-war context as seen in the picture directly above taken by the late French photographer Marc Riboud at the 1967 March on the Pentagon. But nowhere do daisies make such an explicit anti-war appearance as in this scene from the film, "Harold and Maude."

 

Maude, that feisty Holocaust survivor and septuagenarian role model, manages to simultaneously turn the simple daisy into a symbol of individuality and communality. I've never looked at a daisy in quite the same way since I saw the film in 1971 when it was first released.

I suggest we Americans forgo poppies and yellow ribbons and plant daisies: Not to remember, but to never forget that there are no winners in war, only survivors. 

Comments

[Susan Adler Sobol]

A poignant post for Veterans Day. I haven't seen Harold and Maude in decades. Must revisit. Thank you, Linda!

[Lisa at Greenbow]

My Mother had me sell those poppies way back when.

[Loree / danger garden]

Thank you Linda.

[Barbara H.]

I remember those poppies, too. And I know that I really liked Harold and Maude but now I know that much of that movie has faded from memory. Thanks for this little bit of history, memory and nostalgia.

[Peter/Outlaw]

I haven't seen Harold and Maude in ages. Thanks for the clip! I actually bought a paper poppy from a veteran selling them inside a local grocery store and wore it all weekend to remind myself of the human cost of war.

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.