Synaptic

I was impressed with Dana’s careful description and research into the mammoth London art installation marking the 100th anniversary of WWI, but I was equally impressed with the compassionate connections she makes at the end of the essay between that event and all wars.

-Keith Ratzlaff

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The blood swept lands and seas of red,

Where angels dare to tread.

As I put my hand to reach,

As God cried a tear of pain as the angels fell,

Again and again.

– Stanza from “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” a poem by a WWI unknown soldier

Scarlet poppies cascaded out of the Weeping Window, arched over the bridge way, and dotted the entire green space around the Tower of London. A river of blood seeped from the fortress, staining British soil, flooding into a moat of ceramic blooms with emerald stems. I rested my head against the wrought iron gate as people milled about the walkways around me – all reverent. Even though we were in the middle of the city, a veil of silence surrounded the tower. It reminded me of Memorial Day back in the States. My family silently clustering around relatives’ headstones, painfully aware of how alive we are in the moment. Standing in front of the poppies, I felt my blood flowing freely, flowing life.

London had been engulfed with poppies in honor of Remembrance Week – seven days dedicated to commemorating all who had perished in the line of duty for the British Commonwealth. Remembrance Week is held annually in November, and during this time each year, crimson flowers become the centerpiece of London, hanging on crosses erected in front of Westminster Abbey, circling wreaths in cemeteries, and lining pathways around St. Paul’s Cathedral. Poppy pins pepper the suitcoats of commuters on the tube and hang from the straps of women’s handbags. Almost every Briton has a poppy, and to go without is almost treason. However, 2014’s Remembrance Week was even more significant because it was the 100th anniversary of World War I.

The centennial anniversary was specially marked by an art installation at the Tower of London called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red. The tower was encircled by 888,246 ceramic poppies, representing each British Commonwealth military fatality during World War I. The poppy has been associated with memorialization since a Canadian soldier, John McCrae, noticed the blushing flower springing up from the disturbed ground at Ypres, Belgium around May 1915 where three battles had taken place between the Allied and German forces for control of the city. McCrae took note of the poppies in his poem, “In Flander’s Field:”

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.

An American woman named Moina Michael working at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries’ Headquarters in New York came across McCrae’s poem in the November issue of the Ladies Home Journal in 1918 and was deeply moved. She made a pledge to wear a silk red poppy in remembrance for those who died in World War I. Word of her pledge spread, and the poppy soon became internationally accepted as a memorial symbol. A symbol that still endures today.

Like Moina, Paul Cummins was inspired by a poem and designed the tower’s poppy display from the words of the anonymous soldier. Cummins commissioned 52 potters to make 7,000 flowers a day. Each bloom handcrafted by cutting out clay poppy stencils, molding the flat petals into a cup-like structure, and loading the flowers into the kiln. Next, each one was painted and re-fired to harden the glaze. Even though all the blooms underwent the same assembling process, each had its own unique petal folds, imperfections, and beauty – an appropriate representation of each fallen soldier with his own fears, loves, and memories of home out on the battlefield. Soldiers loading their firearms and donning their gas masks, caked in earth as they tunneled trenches. Clay underneath their fingernails; similar to the potters investing their artistry into each soldier. Eventually though, each unique bloom joins the uniformity of the red sea.

The “planting” of the poppies began in July and ended in November; during which, over 4 million visitors came to see the display. At the beginning of November, exhibition managers urged the public to avoid visiting the tower because it was becoming overcrowded, and the nearest underground station was closed as a result. On the final day of Remembrance Week, a friend and I defied the requests and braved the crowds to see the poppies one last time.

The sidewalks teemed with pedestrians with hardly any room to walk. I bumped into all the surrounding bodies and squinted up against the sun at police officers who stood above the crowd with megaphones to direct foot traffic: “Keep walking people! You need to keep moving! Do not stand in the middle of the sidewalk!” Wood slats were put on some of the fences surrounding the tower to prevent people from blocking the pedestrian flow by stopping to look. I stood on my tiptoes to see over the slats, but my height wasn’t in my favor. We tried to maneuver ourselves to an area without the slats, but the crowd foiled our efforts. I was thankful that I had already seen the display a number of times on my various excursions around London.

 

As I sat at my internship desk on a Tuesday morning, my director and fellow intern joined the United Kingdom in bowing our heads to pay our respects for two minutes at 11:00 a.m. on November 11 – Armistice Day. In the silence, I conjured up images of soldiers and the women and children they left at home to fend for themselves. Nurses tending to wounds, industrial workers producing weapons, the opposing forces fighting for their homelands as well. Then, I pictured the devastation of London boroughs during World War II’s Blitzkrieg. The decimation of the East End docks, St. Paul’s Cathedral miraculously untouched, a beacon of hope. The death of around 60 Londoners on October 14, 1940 in the Balham underground station along the Northern Line, where people slept to seek cover from the Blitz. A bomb exploded on Balham High Road over the northern end of the station, creating a huge crater in the street. A double decker bus crashed into the crater and broke the water and sewage lines. Water gushed into the station and flooded the tunnels where 500 civilians were sleeping. Each day that I traveled to my internship in Balham, I passed the plaque honoring the victims of the disaster.

I strolled down the pathways of Hyde Park and Regent’s Park where 11 military personnel were killed between two bombings during memorial services on July 20, 1982. I rode the underground from King’s Cross to Russell Square almost daily where a suicide bombing took place on July 7, 2005, killing 26 passengers. The bombing was one of four attacks that day, three on the underground and one on a bus in Tavistock Square – a block from my apartment; 52 people died that day. The death toll seems endless, spanning all the years, wars, and routine days. London itself was a battle ground. When Remembrance Week comes and poppies spring from the city, London becomes Flanders field. Red flowering and seeping into the once disturbed ground of each borough. As Britons pin on their poppies and stay true to Moina’s pledge, the blooms become more than just a mere symbol of remembrance. Each poppy becomes a person, a story, and a sacrifice. A sea of scarlet and a chorus of voices that won’t be forgotten.

Works Cited

“The Story Behind the Remembrance Poppy.” Great War: 1914-1918. Greatwar.co.uk. Web. Mar. 2015.

“Tower of London Remembers.” Historic Royal Palaces: Tower of London. Historical Royal Palaces, 2015. Web. Mar. 2015.