When I got married, oh, quite a few years ago now, we went to Belgium for our honeymoon.

Yeah, right, I know Belgium isn’t perhaps the most romantic spot in the world – Greek islands or the south of France do perhaps win out there – but in those far-off days, with a limited budget, Greek islands seemed about as get-at-able as the dark side of the moon and Belgium was Abroad. There was different money, different-but-the-same food (Belgium chips are served with tartare sauce which was an absolute revelation; we even had garlic!!! Wow, this was really going it!) people talked in Foreign and, perhaps nicest of all, were the cafes.

The main square in Bruges has a choice of cafes which are an agreeable cross between an English pub and a French café terrace. You can eat and drink outside but, because the Belgium climate is as interesting as Britain’s, all the cafes have a big, quietish room in which blue-overalled whiskery-chinned blokes sip their beer or coffee, small children act like members of the human race and families relax. The décor runs to dark wood, brass and comfortable chairs and all in all, exudes an atmosphere of contented well-being.

And on the bar was a tray of poppies and a collecting tin. Now, in those fledgling days, I was surprised to see them. Remembrance Day poppies were British, surely? It was mid-October and these were the first poppies we’d seen that year. The lady behind the bar beamed as we picked up a poppy from the tray and beamed even more as she heard our accents.

Ingerlish?

Well, yes.

More beams and then, without any self-consciousness at all, she declaimed, word perfect and in a carrying voice, In Flander’s fields the poppies grow, between the crosses, row on row…

The whiskery blue-overalled stopped drinking and rustling their newspapers and nodded in grave approval. Children gazed in polite admiration and their parents listened attentively. I can’t imagine what would happen if the bar-maid in an English pub got overtaken by poetry but it wouldn’t be this reverent silence.

Belgium? Bruges? In Flanders’ fields…? Damnit, that’s where we were. If not in the fields, exactly, certainly in Flanders. Flanders. That’s why (uh, duh!) the Foreign being spoken wasn’t French but Flemish. This was where my granddad (and yours too, most probably) had fought the Great War. And the Belgiums hadn’t forgotten. It was one of those moments when history catches up with you in a rush.

Since then I’ve been back to Flanders’ Fields and realised just how much the poppy means to the Belgiums. I’ve been to the dressing station (a first port of call for the wounded) beside the Canal de l'Yser where Major John McCrea, a Canadian doctor, anguished by the death of his friend, wrote In Flander’s fields. The dressing-station looks for all the world like a set of old garages with the doors off. It’s not been spruced up and is more real, somehow, because of it.

A few hundred yards away, at the Menin gate in Ypres, the Last Post is played every night at eight o’clock. Every night, and the traffic stops and wreaths are laid and it all seems as if it could only happen once a year but no, it’s every night. The Ypres Fire Service have played the Last Post each evening from about 1920 or so. When the Nazis marched into Ypres in the Second World War, the ceremony was stopped. On the day the Nazis left, the Fire Service returned.

With all that in my head, I was disappointed this Sunday, when, at the local Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial, we prayed that, We should commit ourselves to responsible living and faithful service, and to Work for a just future for all humanity and other laudable sentiments but we didn’t say the Poppy poem. I mean, you can’t disagree with the ideas, but I can’t see anyone, not even a Belgium barmaid, quoting them.

So here is Major McCrea’s poem. Perhaps you could drop a coin into a Poppy tin. It’s a very small way of keeping the faith McCrea talks about – and of helping the living, too.



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.