The red poppy and the white

Red because we remember them, white to remind us never again.

I was so struck by the story cabbagetree told along with the beautiful image of her aunt and uncle that I went to the box of old photos and found one of my aunt Edith. Her siblings were all present in the August 1916 photos in the album. Her two brothers (one was taking the photos) and three sisters, with my little mum being the one swinging on the rail with her socks falling down.

Her brother Dick (in uniform in the photos) was in the fighting on several different fronts; he got a medal for some sort of action in Basra, of all places. He got a lungful of gas later in the war, presumably on the Western Front, but survived as a semi-invalid, taking little shallow breaths, for about forty years.

Edith worked in a munitions factory during the war, but died shortly after it ended of the same 'Spanish' influenza that killed cabbagetree's aunt Mollie. It's thought that the troops returning to their homes all over the world helped spread the 'flu.

We remember them.