Hello and welcome to a special Remembrance Day edition of Battleground with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

We can have a little bit of a chat on the meaning behind it

it all, Patrick, where the idea for the poppies came about, Remembrance Day, the Unknown Warrior.

But we're also going to play later on in the episode. Some recordings we did when we were in

London Poppy Day. That was a couple of weeks ago, traveling around London, trying to raise

money for the poppy appeal, all for a good cause. Yeah, no, it's a big thing here in the UK

Remembrance Day. You can't miss it. People start wearing their poppies a couple of weeks beforehand.

Every broadcaster, TV broadcaster, will be wearing their poppies, every on-screen report,

everyone on tele period, is wearing a poppy.

So after all these years, it's interesting that the tradition persists.

And of course, we're always reminded of the poem that gave birth to the idea and to the symbolism.

I was going to quote, it's only a short poem.

And it goes, in Flanders fields, the poppies blur between the crosses, row on

row, that mark our place, and in the sky the lark still bravely singing fly, scarce heard, amid

the guns below. We are the dead, short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset 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 he'd break faith with us who die we shall not not sleep, though poppies grow in Flandersfield.

Now this was a poem by a Canadian soldier and doctor, the military doctor, army doctor,

John McRae, who was born in Guelph, Ontario, and he went off to, he sat as he served in the Boer Wall

before ending up on the Western Front. And he was actually in the April 1915 Battle of Eap.

And for 17 days he looked after those who've been injured in the battle. And this was really the

inspiration for the poem,

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