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Ross-on-Wye

In memory of ...

The Great War

The Great War (World War I) ran from 1914-1918 and all the people who fell in the Ross district are commemorated on the memorial in the Prospect.




The War Memorial Ross-on-Wye

The Ross-on-Wye War Memorial in the Prospect and wreaths around the War Memorial
(Click for a larger image)

Each year the end of the War is celebrated on the 11th November (called Armistice Day) and the following Sunday is "Remembrance Sunday" when special ceremonies are held to remember all who were involved in the War effort and wreaths of poppies are laid at the War Memorials.

Colonel John McCrae, who was a Professor of Medicine at McGill University in Canada before World War I, first described the red poppy (the Flanders' poppy) as the flower of remembrance.

Wild poppies flower when other plants in the area have died or been killed. Poppy seeds can lie on the ground for many years and only when there are no more competing plants in the vicinity or if the the ground is firmly rooted up, these seeds will sprout. This was what happened on the Western Front and the whole front consisted of churned up soil resulting in a huge expanse of blood red poppies unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. This meant that in May 1915, McCrae wrote his poem "In Flanders Fields".



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[Page updated: Feb 15 2011 13:31:58]






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