Paying Tribute, Saying Thanks

By Congresswoman Deborah Pryce

By November of 1918, Europe was devastated by the unbelievable horrors of World War I.  For the four previous years, the Western Front served as host to a tragic stalemate of trench warfare, with nearly 25,000 miles of lines stretching from Belgium to Switzerland. 

Three particularly gruesome battles took place in the city of Ypres, a quaint Belgian town previously known for its plush fields of red poppies.  In 1915, amidst incomprehensible loss of life and a completely devastated landscape, poppies again began to bloom in astonishing numbers.  A Canadian army physician John M. McCrae stationed in Ypres penned the poem, “In Flanders Fields”, after sixteen grueling days of treating mortally injured men.  Fittingly, “In Flanders’ Fields” is also the name of an American War Cemetery in Belgium where 368 American soldiers are today buried. 

In Flanders’ Fields

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.

Since the poem’s publishing ninety years ago, Americans have used the red poppy to commemorate the military men and women who have died while fighting for freedom and democracy around the world. 

God be willing, America will never know the unimaginable horror of a war of this magnitude being fought on our soil.   However, America will also remain vigilant against the enemy of terrorism around the globe, to ensure that our lives will never again be affected as they were on September 11^th , 2001. 

This Memorial Day, I encourage you and your families to wear a red poppy, and to take pause to pensively honor the nearly million and a half Americans who have died defending America since our country’s inception, as well as the 130,000 troops fighting Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq, and the nearly 200,000 additional troops stationed around the world.

They are all heroes in our hearts forever.