![]() Wearing a poppy is still a very personal choice, reflecting individual experiences. The poppy is a well-known and well-established symbol, one that carries a wealth of history and meaning with it. Poppies are worn as a show of support for the Armed Forces community. The stories that came down from those days are deeply impressed within me, together with grief for what they went through, and awe for what we owe them. Our red poppy is a symbol of both Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future. Like so many of us, my own family was involved in the terrible struggle of that war: my grandfather, who served in the Royal Navy, was twice torpedoed - his ships sunk - but thankfully, survived. ![]() Weve brought together art, music, poetry. One of the warships that undertook naval bombardment of the coastal defences ahead of the landings, the cruiser HMS Belfast, is moored in London, on the Thames, to this day - a floating museum. Our hugely popular Remembrance Live Assembly is back, streaming to schools across the UK on Friday 10 November. Nevertheless, the poem is intended to commemorate all of the Allied soldiers who took part. ![]() It recalls the D-Day landings of the last world war - and in particular, the landings on Juno Beach, which were conducted by Canadian and British forces. While we British may grumble that Hollywood renderings tend to focus solely on the American contribution to the assault, the role of Canadian troops tends to be overlooked far more often than that of the British - so one motivation behind this poem was to redress that (however modestly). I wrote this poem some years ago, though I have not republished it since its inclusion in the 2004 Arvon Poetry Competition prize-winners' anthology (it was commended in the competition that year). On the 6 June 1944 Operation Overlord, was finally launched as the first step to freeing Western Europe from Axis domination. ![]()
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