Why I Wear my Poppy With Pride

I am opposed to war in general, and fiercely against the illegal war in Iraq, and do not see war - or pointless deaths – as something to be celebrated. However, the poppy reminds me of where I come from, particularly thinking of my paternal grandparents.

My grandfather lost a leg fighting in WW2, and the poppy simply makes me think of him. I think about how he overcame the prognosis of never being able to walk again to walking, driving – until the end of his life – and even playing football with his sons. I really admire that stoic drive, determination, ambition and absolute refusal to be beaten, which he passed on to my dad, and I try to let that live on in myself, and I think there’s something very transcendental in that.

It also makes me think of my grandmother (happily still with us; quite the social butterfly in her retirement home). Her escape from Nazi Germany, via many alarming but fascinating adventures, culminated in her eventual relocation in the UK. She never tires of telling me of how, having had all her possessions taken away from her – twice – and forced to share a single outfit with her sister, one day she was in Selfridges (I have never quite understood what a penniless teenage German refugee with only one shared set of clothes was doing in Selfridges, but whatever), using the loo, and she saw another woman putting a roll of toilet paper in her bag. She confronted the woman, who reasoned that as a penniless refugee, she could not afford to buy toilet paper, and this roll would go unnoticed, so she was taking it. At this point in this often-recounted story, Oma launches into a long monologue about how she would never have taken the toilet paper, despite having no money, because that would have been theft, and it was important to recognise that this country let her in when other countries had turned her away, and she feels forever indebted to Britain for this.

So the poppy to me is a symbol of how my grandparents fought hard – in different ways – to survive and to enable their future generations to live, teaching them the values of hard work, humility (I need to work on that one) and cultural and spiritual betterment. The fact that I sit here today, university-educated, independent, with a decent career (writing this blog post, free to practise my religion, and with a bright future ahead of me (I’m sure it’s out there somewhere), is testament to the fighting spirit of my grandparents’ generation. None of us celebrate this or appreciate this enough, and that is why we should wear the poppy.

Now, apparently – according to my grandmother – all I need is a nice husband to share my life with…