Las flores que mejor representan las batallas y los soldados caídos son las ¨no me olvides¨, las rosas y amapolas.
La amapola de Flanders es también conocida por ser el emblema de las guerras mundiales, pero mucho antes de ello, el campo de batalla de Neerwinden o Landen (1693) se cubrió al cabo de un año con una gran cantidad de amapolas escarlatas: el suelo había sido fertilizado con los 20,000 cuerpos de los soldados.
“ In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, 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 ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields” .
(Autor Colonel John McCrae 1872-1918)
Campo de amapolas, imagen de Google images
En el otoño de 1919, el señor Newman Flower salió a los campos de batallas a juntar semillas de flores salvajes que crecían por doquier. Colectó semillas de amapolas de Fricourt , entre muchas especies más; las empaquetó, etiquetó y las llevó a su hogar. Estas semillas de guerra fueron plantadas en la primavera de 1920. Eventualmente, un artículo en un periódico nacional publicó la historia de este jardín de remembranzas, y desde entonces, Flower recibió numerosas cartas de parientes de los hombres muertos en dichos campos. A ellos, Flower les envió pequeños paquetes de semillas para que los jardines de remembranzas se iniciaran en múltiples lugares del mundo.
En 1985, el cantante Sting escribió una hermosa canción dedicada a los dos grupos de niños (uno de Francia, otro de Alemania) que iniciaron una cruzada a la Tierra Santa luego de la cuarta cruzada, en 1212.
En una entrevista a Sting, en 1985, él explica este evento, donde muchos niños murieron en el intento y los demás fueron vendidos como esclavos. Luego recuerda las guerras mundiales y finalmente concluye que la venta de drogas a los niños es también una especie de cruzada moderna, basada en la esclavitud de la adicción:
"'Children's Crusade' is a fairly bitter song. The original children's crusade took place in the 11th century and two monks had the great idea of recruiting children from the streets of Europe and telling them that they were going to be an army to fight for Christ in Palestine, and to fight the Saracens. The intention all along was to sell them as slaves in Africa. And that's what they did; they recruited thousands of children and sold them as slaves. It seemed a very wonderful symbol of cynicism and the perversion of youthful idealism. Having thought about this for awhile, I realized this wasn't the only children's crusade in history - there have been many. So I look for examples. And the examples in the song I used are the first World War, where millions of young men, Germans, French, English, were killed for reasons that even today we don't understand. A whole generation was wiped out in a very foolish and cynical manner. And then I looked around today for an example of a children's crusade and I think the heroin industry is a good example, where businessmen are making vast fortunes by selling drugs to people who can't deal with them. …..This too is a children's crusade, and the same people who sold slaves in the 11th century, and the same people who sent young men to their deaths in the first World War are the same people selling these drugs. The song is really wishing them to hell." (De http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8203)
The Flower of England (La Flor de Inglaterra) es una metáfora de los jóvenes ingleses, y se representa con las amapolas, las que son también el origen del Opio....
"Children's Crusade" por Sting
Young men, soldiers, Nineteen Fourteen
Marching through countries they'd never seen
Virgins with rifles, a game of charades
All for a Children's Crusade
Pawns in the game are not victims of chance
Strewn on the fields of Belgium and France
Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed
The children of England would never be slaves
They're trapped on the wire and dying in waves
The flower of England face down in the mud
And stained in the blood of a whole generation
Corpulent generals safe behind lines
History's lessons drowned in red wine
Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed
All for a Children's Crusade
The children of England would never be slaves
They're trapped on the wire and dying in waves
The flower of England face down in the mud
And stained in the blood of a whole generation
Midnight in Soho, Nineteen Eighty-four
Fixing in doorways, opium slaves
Poppies for young men, such bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed
All for a Children's Crusade
Una version en Francia, en vivo, de la canción la encontramos en este link
Referencia.
Lesley Gordon. Green Magic. Flowers Plants and Herbs in Lore and Legend.
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