In the spring of 1915, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian artillery unit brigade surgeon, saw bright-red poppies blooming on the war-torn fields where so many soldiers had lost their lives. The sight moved him to write the famous poem “In Flanders Fields”:
The poem was published in a London magazine and other Allied countries. American University of Georgia professor Moïna Michael and Anna Guérin in France saw it and used poppies for fundraising for veterans and their families. Now it is worn in memory and as a symbol of the casualties of war.