First World War Folk Tales

by Taffy Thomas

  In the autumn of 1916, more than twenty-four months since he had been wounded at Mons, Captain Campbell received a letter from home. His dear mother, Louise, was dying of cancer.

  Finding themselves in Captain Campbell’s shoes, many men may have accepted that he had seen the last of her. But not Robert. He requested pen and paper and wrote to the one person he believed might have the power to help him. He wrote to the Kaiser himself, Wilhelm II, and he begged him to allow an upstanding British officer the chance to see his dying mother one last time.

  Now, for all his aggressive ambition for his country, Kaiser Bill was not an uncompassionate man. He could never find it in himself to despise Britain completely, for while it was a nation with which he was at war, it was also a nation with which he was inextricably linked through his mother’s bloodline. So whether it was because Campbell’s letter appealed to his sense of family fidelity, whether he admired the plucky captain’s resourcefulness in writing to him, or whether he simply made a decision on a whim, the Kaiser promptly granted the British officer two weeks’ compassionate leave. But there was a condition. The Kaiser expected his generosity to be repaid with honesty and the captain’s leave was to be granted solely on the condition that he promise faithfully to return.

  Astounded by the Kaiser’s show of chivalry, Captain Campbell duly swore an oath on his honour to make his way back to Magdeburg once his visit had ended.

  Without delay, a telegram from Berlin was despatched to London, announcing: ‘Capt R.C. Campbell is arriving at Gravesend on 7 November on a fortnight’s leave of absence on parole.’ The surprised captain swiftly set off on a two-day journey home, travelling by train through Holland and then by boat across the sea to Blighty.

  On 7 November, as the telegram had predicted, he arrived by his sick mother’s bedside back home in Gravesend in Kent.

  Captain Campbell spent one last precious week with his mother before the time came for him to keep his promise to the Kaiser and return to his German prison.

  Not once did he consider breaking the oath he had taken. Not once did his superiors suggest that he should. For everyone accepted that the Kaiser’s gesture of kindness should be met with respect.

  So it was that Captain Robert Campbell made his way back to port and boarded a return passage to Holland, crossing that country once again by train into Germany.

  If Captain Campbell’s arrival back at the prison gate surprised his captors, his attempted escape soon after must have surprised them all the more. For why would a man who had been given his key to freedom throw it away only to try to break out the hard way, spending nine hard months digging a tunnel? But, being a man with a strong sense of duty, that was precisely what Campbell did. Sadly, though, his efforts were to no avail, as he and his three fellow escapees were captured just over the border into Holland and dragged back to their cells.

  In the months and years that followed, the captain would try to make other attempts at escape, but each of them were equally unsuccessful and eventually he had to accept that his contribution to the war was over. He was not to leave Magdeburg again until the Armistice was signed. When he finally made it home to Gravesend once more, Louise Campbell’s bed was empty, for having seen her beloved son, she had finally lost her battle with cancer in February 1917.

  Captain Campbell may have missed out on the bulk of the fighting in the First World War, but he would have his chance to serve his country again in 1939, when he rejoined the army to serve in the Royal Observer Corps on the Isle of Wight in the Second World War.

  Once again, the gods appeared to look down favourably upon him, for Campbell survived everything that the war threw at him. He saw peace restored to British shores, and remained on the Isle of Wight for the rest of his life, refusing to let his light go out until 1966 and not before he had reached the grand old age of eighty-one.

  THE POPPY LADY

  On 2 May 1915, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by a German artillery shell in the Second Battle of Ypres. He was a friend and former student of the military doctor Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. Both men served in the Canadian army. The following day, after leading the burial service and while sitting near to his friend’s grave, McCrae wrote the lines to a poem which has become emblematic of the First World War: ‘In Flanders Fields’.

  McCrae’s powerful poem was first published in the Punch magazine in December 1915. Three years later, in November 1918, it was also printed in the American publication known as the Ladies’ Home Journal, and it was here that a lady named Moina Belle Michael first came upon it. Inspired by the poem, Moina began to promote the idea of wearing poppies for remembrance – a tradition which has lasted to this day and is central to The Royal British Legion’s annual Poppy Appeal which raises millions of pounds every year. This is Moina’s story.

  There is an Ancient Roman legend about Ceres, the corn goddess, who was so exhausted from her search for her lost daughter, Proserpine, that all the corn in the land stopped growing. To help her to rest, Somnus, the god of sleep, created the poppy, the seeds of which he blended with honey and milk and offered to Ceres as a drink to soothe her to sleep. While the goddess slept, the corn began to grow again and when she woke, she could see stretched before her miles of cornfields, sprinkled with red, like drops of blood.

  From that day forwards, not only did people believe that corn poppies – also called corn roses – had to be present for a good corn harvest to grow, they also believed that the poppy could bring about merciful sleep.

  Poppies began to spring up as symbol of sleep in life and death in legends all over the world and throughout time. Then came the First World War and it was while working as a surgeon in the field hospitals in France that one soldier was so struck by the abundance of this bright red flower – which covered the battlefields and seemed to spring from the blood-drenched soil onto which so many soldiers fell – that he put pen to paper and wrote a poem which was destined to be famous. His name was John McRae and his poem was ‘In Flanders Fields’.

  But the story does not stop there …

  One day in 1918, while helping to host a conference in the War Office in New York, an American lady, Moina Belle Michael, decided to take a short break. She found a quiet spot, picked up a magazine and began to leaf through it. She noticed that one of the pages was marked, and casting her eye over it, she was immediately struck by a powerful image which was printed alongside a short poem. The picture showed three soldiers, rising into the air like angels ascending to heaven, above a ground strewn with wooden crosses and poppy flowers.

  Then Moina read the poem, finding herself profoundly moved by words which had clearly been written from the heart on the battlefields of Belgium three years before by a man called Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.

  This was ‘In Flanders Fields’, and as Moina read each verse, she felt as if the voices of all the dead soldiers from those battlefields were speaking directly to her.

  If ye break faith with us who die

  We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

  Moina knew that she could never provide a true representation of what those brave soldiers had done on the Western Front but she could, as the poem said, keep the faith and carry the torch for those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice. Right there, she made a promise that from that day on, she would always wear a poppy as a sign of remembrance.

  She sealed her promise in writing, by hastily scribbling her own poem in reply to McCrae’s, on a crumpled, yellowed envelope which had been lying on her desk.

  Just as she finished the last line, a man who was attending the conference in the War Office approached Moina. Thanking her for her hard work, he gave her a ten dollar cheque.

  Moina thanked the man and, rising from her chair, she told him that she knew what to buy with the money and that she was going shopping right away. ‘I shall buy red poppies,’ she announced with a bright smile, ‘twenty-five red poppies.’ Then she showed the man the poem and explained to him her pledge.


  The man spread the word and, as the day went on, all the delegates at the conference – one after the next – came to see Moina to ask for a poppy for their buttonhole.

  Moina quickly ran out of fresh poppies, which set her thinking: if the poppies were a symbol of remembrance, then surely it would be better if they never faded.

  She set off on a quest all over New York City, looking for artificial versions of the blood-red flower. Finally, after hours of searching, she found what she was looking for. Sitting among the flowers in Wanamaker’s famous department store were two-dozen perfect, red silk poppies, each with four petals – just like the field poppies of Flanders.

  Word of Moina’s remembrance poppies began to spread and the demand grew. When she ran out of silk poppies, she made some more, and some more … until she had made so many, she became known far and wide as ‘The Poppy Lady’. She had sown the seeds of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy and had created a worldwide symbol of remembrance.

  In Flanders Fields

  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.

  Lt Col John McCrae (1872–1918)

  About the Authors

  Taffy Thomas MBE trained as a literature and drama teacher at Dudley College of Education and taught for several years in Wolverhampton. He founded and directed the legendary folk theatre company, Magic Lantern, and founded and directed the rural community arts company, Charivari, with their popular touring unit, the Fabulous Salami Brothers, which he fronted and performed in until he was sidelined by a stroke, aged just thirty-six. He turned back to storytelling as self-imposed speech therapy. Taffy has a repertoire of more than 300 stories and tales collected mainly from traditional oral sources, and is now the most experienced English storyteller, having pioneered many storytelling residencies and appeared at the National Storytelling Festival in the USA and the Bergen Arts Festival in Norway. In the 2001 New Year Honours List he was awarded the MBE for services to storytelling and charity and, in the same year, performed for the Blue Peter Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. In October 2009, Taffy accepted the honorary position of the first Laureate for Storytelling. He is currently artistic director of Tales in Trust, the Northern Centre for Storytelling, in Grasmere. He tours nationally and internationally, working in both entertainment and education and is a patron of the Society for Storytelling. In October 2013, Taffy was selected as Outstanding Male Storyteller in the British Awards for Storytelling Excellence.

  Helen Watts is a writer, editor and publisher who has worked in educational publishing for twenty-six years, the majority of those specialising in the production of literacy resources for teachers and children at primary school level. Her experience includes magazine and book publishing, and she has worked for some of the biggest and best publishing houses in the UK, including Scholastic and Heinemann Educational. For ten years, Helen was editor of the Literacy Time magazine, after which she founded The Literacy Club, through which she published magazines and books, including the paperback collection Taffy’s Coat Tales by Taffy Thomas MBE. May 2013 saw the publication of Helen’s first historical fiction novel, One Day In Oradour (A&C Black/Bloomsbury), which received a nomination for the 2014 CILIP Carnegie Medal for an outstanding book for children and young adults. Her second novel, No Stone Unturned, will be published by A&C Black/Bloomsbury in 2014. Helen’s recent educational publications include WWI Primary Teaching Resource – Facts, activities and pictures on The Great War, Make Phonics Fun and Building Blocks: Themed Activities for the Early Years Foundation Stage (all published by LCP).

  Copyright

  First published in 2014

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Helen Watts & Taffy Thomas, 2014

  The right of Helen Watts & Taffy Thomas to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB 978 0 7509 5867 7

  Original typesetting by The History Press

  Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk