The Tower of London Poppies

Last fall, I was lucky enough to be part of this experience in London and wanted to share my story with my coworkers around the world.

—Debbie Cox, IR sales representative, East Anglia and East Midlands

The artist’s inspiration

Ceramic artist Paul Cummins was inspired by a line written by a Derbyshire man who joined the First World War in its earliest days and later died in Flanders. The soldier, knowing that everyone around him was dead and he was surrounded by blood, wrote: “The blood-swept lands and seas of red, where angels fear to tread.” This thought gave Cummins the idea for creating a display of 888,246 ceramic poppies, one for each British or Colonial military fatality during the First World War.

The poppies went from an idea to reality and were placed in the moat of the Tower of London, “planted” a few at a time from August 5, 2014, (the 100^th anniversary of Britain declaring war on Germany) through November 11, 2014 (anniversary of armistice day that ended the war in 1918).

After the art installation ended, the ceramic poppies were available for sale, with six charities benefiting from the sales. Two of these charities were “Help for Heroes” and The Royal British Legion.

I followed the “poppies” story through social media and main-stream news and I was fascinated by the whole project. I initially went to see the “Poppies at the Tower” in October 2014 and took along some relatives from overseas. The sheer volume of red created by the artist’s flowers was certainly a “sea of red.”

My own inspiration

On social media I saw that the Tower of London was looking for volunteers to help “un-plant” the poppies. I submitted my application form and about two weeks later I got an email declining my offer as they had had over 10,000 applications. With a deep sigh and an extremely polite “Oh, dear,” I carried on with life. Then 24 hours later I received another email, this time telling me I had now a shift for the morning of the 14^th of November.

Amazing result, happy lady!

Friday arrived and I was on a 6:30 am train to London, ready for my shift, armed with waterproof coat, hat, and trousers. Our glorious English weather did not let me down. It rained and rained and, yes, rained. As the poppies were in the moat of the Tower, you can guess it was pretty muddy and wet.

So, first stop, COFFEE !

We were briefed on how the shift would run, and our team leader George was really good fun and made the day pass so quickly. We had to treat the poppies with care, as they were quite fragile, and remove them from the ground in a particular way to not damage them. These were the poppies that had been sold and would be posted out to each person who had bought one.

There was a production line of activity and we all had a turn at each job, whether it was picking the poppies, wheeling the barrows with the poppies, or simply sorting out the plastic stoppers that held the poppies on their stalks. After three hours of hard work, our team of 20 had picked 3,000 poppies. At the end of our shift, we were allowed to walk among the remaining poppies and other “picking teams” and soak up the atmosphere. It wasn’t until after my shift had finished that I noticed the sheer volume of people who stood above us on the walls, watching the work that was being done.

The three shifts of people who worked that day picked a total of 250,000 poppies. Unfortunately, there were some poppies that had been broken and couldn’t be repaired. These were to be boxed up and taken out to the Flanders in Belgium to be buried.

This was a truly humbling day that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I was proud to take part in this once in a lifetime event. I now will wait for my poppies to be delivered and wonder if by chance they may be the ones I actually picked. Here are a few photos from the day. You can watch a video about the making of the poppies on YouTube.

[quote_center]”The blood-swept lands and seas of red, where angels fear to tread.”[/quote_center]

Poppies Tower