Not Forgotten
World War I ended 107 years ago. No one who experienced that war is still alive. No one who is the child of someone who experienced it is still alive. Yet the continued commitment to honor the men and women who served during the war in an area called the Ypres Salient in western Belgium is amazing. And the reminders of the intense and repeated battles that took place in a 54 square mile area there are abundant. Depending on how you count, up to one million people died in the area in a four-year stalemate that included trench warfare, one of the first uses of poison gas and one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions that has ever occurred. It also produced the poem “In Flanders Field”, written by a Canadian doctor who worked in a damp bunker just behind the front line and had presided over the funeral of a friend the day before writing the poem. That poem's reference to red poppies is the reason that remembrance poppies are the symbol of those who have died in conflict. Initially...