Who would have thought helping to put a poppy festival together could be so time consuming…or require so many poppies. It was a humbling experience to consider that on average for each day of the Great War 1500 men from all sides of the conflict were killed. It took much longer than that to make the 1500 poppies that decorated St Thomas’s. Every one was involved from pre-school toddlers to, school children, to the scouts, the WI and the anonymous individuals who left beautiful hand knitted and crocheted poppies on my doorstep and which now climb from floor to the top of the gallery at the back of the church.
Twelve men are named on the war memorial opposite the church. It is sited in a spot that was once the corner of the garden where Private Joseph Brindley played as a child before he turned seventeen and joined the marines. I had the honour to read his diary and to see the hole in its pages that marked the track of the bullet that killed him at the beginning of September 1918. I can only imagine the grief that his family must have suffered when they unwrapped the parcel that arrived containing his dress uniform, trench periscope and diary.
Tomorrow normal blogging will resume – today though, here are a few pictures of poppies:
Dont forget the purple poppies for the animals. My dog Rudi laid a wreath for them.
There was a wreath of purple poppies made by the scouts and a couple of horse shoes. Farmers went to the Bakewell Show in 1914 by horse and returned on foot as the army was waiting to commander their horses when they arrived. Incidentally, that dog of yours is not only beautiful but also a talented hound.
A very moving post……and the arrangements are beautiful!
There were a lot of people involved.
That has hot a nerve far more than most. We owe a debt to the men who died in that advance in Somme and all battles in history that gave us freedom today. Then it is political and Royal alike that waste life in order to prosper. What we need to honour the sacrifice of our dead is to stop war in the bud. Parliament and Royals in all nations must put of the boxing gloves to fight it out themselves not pass on their wars to that man in the street. They start it now is the duty of the world to bring this about. Utopia , perhaps but would solve the problem of mans hatred of mankind and give us hope for a golden future not fields of poppies on the loved men and now women that gave us freedom only for Governments to start war all over again. Sly underhanded and profit nest making scum lots of them across our world must be ruled by the people in future. Civil wars we fought only replaced the tyrant not gave us freedom only taxes.