Show Us Your Poppy

[VSS]

Each to their own as the freedoms won by the dead in question permit.

K

Exactly.
Nobody should be judged for not wearing a poppy.

 

[finnbear270]

And also judged for marching in protest anywhere near a national monument to the dead, who gave their all for their right live to be able to protest in peaceful manner.

 

[willowbank]

I also wear the Purple poppy ….. it’s in remembrance of the uncounted horses lost.

Just finished reading the book ‘Warhorse’ I saw the film a few years ago and left the cinema with a lump in my throat.

Having kept a 16.2 gelded ex pointer for some years I’ve experienced the ways in which a horse thinks and reacts to different circumstances, they are far from stupid and showed emotions especially when I started prepping him for a days hunting.
I was moved when I discovered that the majority of the surviving horses were sold for a couple of pounds to butchers at the end of the Great War and not brought home.

Willowbank

 

[DanTheMan]

Have been a poppy seller for many years. Never served myself but I really appreciate those that did so this is my way of showing it.
Also do talks for scouts, cadets and schools educating them on the horrors of war and the heroes that fought in them, always hoping we can avoid future wars.
Lest We Forget.

 

[finnbear270]

Thank you for your service.

 

[Foxyboy43]

A time to wear the poppy with pride and to remember those who gave so much.
As a moving example of how some gave so very much read the chapter on Lieutenant Edward Workman, a young man born into great wealth as the only son of one of the world’s then greatest shipyards but who did “the right thing” when his country went to war and tragically made the supreme sacrifice.
Lest we forget…

The Belfast Shipyard | A history of Workman Clark in the Great War

A history of the role played in the Great War by the Workman Clark shipyard in Belfast

www.thebelfastshipyard.org

 

[downwind]

Every year my wife and I honour 3 sailors from SS Scottish Monarch, lost in WW1. Their graves are in our churchyard, only one is named. We usually place a cross with a Poppy.

 

[bottletopbill]

This great country as given so much over many years and for what.

Now our country is being taken over by other nationals.

We leave our ex service folks sleeping rough and those injured with little help.

Is it Time for change

 

[Klenchblaize]

Just need to find a pin:

K

 

[BenBhoy]

Just need to find a pin:
View attachment 444804
K

I'd chuck them bananas if was you, look a bit off!!

 

[foxinmad]

Allways see a poppy when in the cupboard opening the gun cabinet, it has been there many years now.
And another on the stock of one of my rifles.

 

[enfieldspares]

Here's mine. Bought yesterday. The basic paper one. For all of them and for him. Bert Spriggs. My late mother's first husband. Went up to Basra in the Iraq War and then up and down and up again to Tobruk. 1939-45 Star, Africa Star, Italy Star, War Medal and Defence Medal.

Will I then wear it? Maybe, maybe not. I've never been one of "the poppy police". If my mother also chose not to wear hers every time she went out and about that's good enough for me to choose not to wear mine ditto.

Lance Serjeant Bert Spriggs | War Casualty Details 2148194 | CWGC

Lance Serjeant Bert Spriggs | War Casualty Details | CWGC

www.cwgc.org

She lived until she was age ninety-four. Having married my father after WWII. And from time to time would say "I always think I've lived so long because I've been given Bert's years he never had to live for him." She died in 2014. Seventy-years exactly the weekend in 1944 that he lost his life.

Bert's brother, Harry Spriggs (who for the short time, three years, until Bert's death they would be married was my mother's brother in law) was chosen as my godfather when I was born in 1957.

 

[RescueMe0007]

Here is my Pop a few years before he died. This was the first time he had worn his medals, some 60 years after they had arrived in the little brown box.

He told the tale that he and his cannon fodder mates had pulled the doors of the brothel in Tripoli, 2 days before the Guards marched in to officially add Tripoli to their colours. After the Sicily landings they asked for volunteers because so many of the medics had been killed, and he swapped his rifle for a red cross arm band and wicker trunk of bandages...he subsequently did numerous landings all the way up the coast of Italy and then Normandy on D Day.

He spoke very highly of the Wermacht. He and two mates jumped into a sunken lane just outside Caen, just as a German patrol jumped in a few yards further up...both sides let rip and his two mates were killed, the Germans respected the little red cross arm band, he was unscathed. He made himself unpopular treating the wounded irrespective of uniform colour, so maybe a little bit of Karma.

He set great store by the arm band and we dressed his coffin with it at his funeral. The arm band was his only protection from Sicily onwards, and he mentioned that there were a number of times when he had been treating the wounded in full view and range of enemy guns.

A few days after Caen the field hospital he was working in was blown up. He was the only survivor, found two days later, knocked stupid wandering around picking up bandages with his ear drums blown out. He spent the rest of the war and a year or so after helping run a huge POW camp outside Brussels. At his discharge medical he was made up to the grade where no pension was due. He (and his family) suffered from PTSD which was finally acknowledged by the MOD after Desert Storm and he and the few surviving similarly affected mates finally received a small war pension thereafter.

We do not forget his service.

Alan



View attachment 229409
View attachment 229417

Clearly, a very brave, unselfish man.

 

[User00056]

 

[Fosbery Holster]

 

[reiver]

My 1916 Somme poppy

 

[NOTSHARP]

 

[FISH BOY]

 

[Klenchblaize]

View attachment 444975

Nice, but why have you got a badger in your boot??

K

 

[3595wilk]

My dad's campaign medals.....