Since September 2010 IWM have ordered over 3000 of our crochet poppies. This has provided regular work for 8 women in La Tablada, Lima, Peru. With the increased demand this year, we have trained another 5 women in another shanty town called California.
For many, the poppy symbolises the great losses suffered during the First World War. The scarlet corn poppy was a common flower on the Western Front, as it was one of the few plants to grow on the battlefields. The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol for the fallen originates from the poem ‘In Flanders Field’ by John McCrae in 1915.
Every purchase from the IWM supports their important educational work about the issues surrounding the conflicts we have been involved in over the last 100 years.
IWM was established in 1917, while the First World War was still being fought, to ensure future generations understood the causes and consequences of war, to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that war and to remember the men and women who served.
‘Our ambition is that a lot more people will understand that you can’t understand the world today unless you understand the causes, course and consequences of the First World War.’ - Diane Lees, Director-General, IWM
This Sunday ceremonies will be held at war memorials across the UK, and a 2 minute silence will occur throughout many homes and business at 11:00am on Monday.
The First Two Minute Silence in London (11 November 1919) was reported in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919:
"The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.
The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.
Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of ‘attention’. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still … The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain … And the spirit of memory brooded over it all."
To learn more about the Imperial War Museum and the history of Remembrance Day, visit the IWM website here : www.iwm.org.uk