Great War project inspires council away-day plus a TV Award

STAFF from Thame Town Council recently took some time away from work at the town hall and joined some of the councillors and members of the Thame Remembers team on a visit to the Poppy Factory in Richmond.

The Mayor of Thame, Nichola Dixon (2nd right) with Mark Croake, Maintenance Assistant  (far right), with town hall staff and Cllr Don Butler, about to visit the Royal British Legion Poppy Factory

As well as learning that The Poppy Factory is a separate charity from the Royal British Legion (although most of its products are sold through the British Legion), they also learned about the origins of the poppy as an emblem of the First World War.

It all began, it seems, with the famous poem by Major John McCrae, which ends with:
“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.”

This was later adapted, in 1919, by Moina Michael in the USA where the first remembrance poppies were sold. The concluding verse of the revised poem reads:

“And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honour of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.”

The first poppies to be sold in England, were in fact made in France.

You can read more about the visit and the Poppy Factory in the latest Thame Remembers newsletter HERE , which includes a piece on how the Thame Remembers project inspired the judges of The Royal Television Society Awards, to recognise the work of a BBC reporter who accompanied Thame Remembers members on a recent Battlefield tour in France.