On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month we pause to remember those who gave their lives for their country. In Australia, what began as Armistice Day is now known as Remembrance Day. Tens of thousands of those left behind worked to relieve suffering and bring comfort, so far as they could, to those going to war, and those returning.
Over thousands of years, in war and in peace, flowers and plants have symbolised victory, defeat, love and loss. Rose petals and wreaths, circlets of laurel, and paths strewn with palm and olive branches have celebrated heroes and welcomed gods and messiahs. Groves of cyprus, pine, willow, and other trees were planted to provided quiet spaces. Here the grieving could contemplate and mourn their lost and fallen.
During and after the Great War, or World War One as it was later named, tiny posies of violets, sprigs of rosemary and the single red poppy increasingly became symbols of remembrance and respect. In Australia, the wattle was a potent patriotic symbol.
Various flowers and plants stood for different things. In the Victorian age, the belief that individual flowers and plants, and their colours, conveyed secret meanings, was widespread. This was known as the language of flowers. For example, rosemary was for remembrance, scarlet poppies for consolation, orange blossom for fertility and white lilies for purity. Today some of these meanings remain popular, including red roses for love and laurel wreaths for victory memory of those who fought in battle. And in memory too, of those medical personnel who fought to save the dying the damaged and the wounded.
This young Woman holds the wreath of flowers placed on Sapper Arthur Nameby Shuttleworth's grave in Longmore cemetery, Kirkdale, Liverpool, England. Sapper Shuttleworth died from pneumonia in the Belmont Road Auxiliary Hospital, Liverpool on 26 October 1918 and was buried on 30 October. The wreath appears to be made of laurel leaves and a variety of white or pale flowers.
Violet Day
The Cheer-up Society was developed from an idea by Mrs Alexandra Seager. She envisaged club rooms for soldiers passing through or on leave and garnered support from some very influential people, especially William Sowden, editor of the Register. The hut was essentially a club for servicemen. It was staffed by volunteers and catered for visiting allied troops and sailors as well as Australians. The French, British and New Zealanders were always welcome. They provided meals, accommodation, entertainment and a friendly face for troops away from home or in transit.
In order to raise funds for the venture and to acknowledge and remember the military personnel who were fighting on various fronts overseas, Mrs Alexandra Seager and her supporters initiated Violet Day. Violets signified faithfulness, humility and patriotism.
It began on 2 July 1915 and was unique to South Australia in its size and scope. Volunteers sold violets throughout the State every year to raise funds for soldiers wounded at Gallipoli. On the first Violet Day in 1915, one bunch of violets sold in Burra for £384 – around $37,000 today. This provided a huge portion of the funds needed for the first Cheer up Hut in Adelaide.
Besides the city, other cheer up huts were then set up in the suburbs and country towns, all on the same model, and under the same banner and rules.
Rose day
It was not only the violet which was known as a symbol of personal remembrance and patriotic sentiment during the war years. Several other blooms came to represent remembrance and support both during and after the Great War. The rose was particularly symbolic of the nurses and other medical personnel who served overseas, many in a voluntary capacity.
Army nurses were highly regarded for their strenuous efforts and courage, often very close to battle lines. Medical assistance was given by nurses and Voluntary Aid Detachment assistants (VADs) under dangerous and primitive conditions. Some lost their lives or were severely wounded trying to save the wounded and dying.
Nurses were regarded as selfless helpers and immortalised in a well-known song of Great War era by Jack Caddigan and James Brennan. It was dedicated to the Red Cross Army nurses who risked their lives on the battlefields.
The Rose of No Man's Land
There's a rose that grows in no-man's land
And it's wonderful to see
Though its sprayed with tears, it will live for years
In my garden of memory
'It's the one red rose the soldier knows
It's the work of the Master's hand '
Neath the War's great curse stands a Red Cross nurse
She's the rose of no-man's land'
Nurses and VADS were also instrumental in the repatriation and recovery of military personnel in Australia. In South Australia returning soldiers, sailors and airmen were treated and housed at Keswick, a number of other hospitals in SA and the Soldiers' home at Myrtle Bank.
Badge illustrations became increasingly artistic and often several different images appeared in the same year as part of a series. This encouraged buyers to collect more than one badge and so raised more funds.
Roses appeared for sale and on badges to raise funds for the war effort.
Army Nurses Day, 1919. SLSA: PRG 903/1/132
This 1919 badges feature native Australian flora, the Manna Gum. SLSA: PRG 903/1/205
Australia Day Carnival Motor Ambulance Workers badge 1918. SLSA: PRG 903/1/97
This Australian Comforts Funds illustration featured poppies as part of this Art Nouveau design. Badge illustrations became increasingly artistic. The poppy signified consolation, and sleep and later, came to represent the battlefields of the Western Front which had claimed so many lives. SLSA: PRG 903/1/103
From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, native fauna and flora were becoming increasingly popular as living plants, depictions in art and furniture and as patriotic emblems.
Wattle day
On 20 September 1889 William Sowden, Vice-President of the Adelaide branch of the Australian Natives’ Association, put forward the idea of a Wattle Blossom League. In fact silver wattle had first been used as a 'national' symbol in Hobart, then 'Hobart Town' at a regatta in 1838.
In 1909 the Wattle Day League was formed in Sydney with the intention of creating an Australian national day with a national floral emblem. Branches spread across the country. On 1 September 1910 the first National Wattle Day celebrations occurred in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. After years of debate over whether the wattle or waratah should become Australia's National emblem, the wattle joined the kangaroo and emu on the second Commonwealth Coat of Arms in 1912.
During World War One, wattle blossom became a powerful symbol of Australia, especially for military and medical personnel serving overseas. at home, sprigs of wattle and Wattle Day badges were sold to raise funds for the war effort.
The red poppy
It was a poem that brought about the use of the scarlet red poppy in remembrance of World War One. 'In Flanders Field' was written in the back of an ambulance during the second battle of Ypres on the Western Front in Belgium. It was written in response to the death of a close friend who had served with Canadian doctor, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He had noticed the profusion of red poppies around the graves of the fallen. The poem is said to have been discarded by the author but retrieved by fellow soldiers. John McRae died later in the war.
The poem was published in London's Punch magazine on 8 December 1915 and rapidly became one of the most famous poems of the era. The poppy was adopted and worn as a symbol of war and Armistice Day (now Remembrance Day) in the USA, then France, Britain and countries within the British Commonwealth, especially Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Today the poppy still commemorates the war dead.
In Flanders Field
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.~ Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae
Poppies also appeared on the beautiful silk-embroidered postcards made by local women and sent back from soldiers to their mothers, sisters, sweethearts and wives. Many other flowers appeared on these cards. Forget-me-nots and pansies were especially popular. In the language of flowers, ivy signified friendship and fidelity, the wallflower stood for fidelity in adversity and zinnias messaged thoughts of absent friends. Violets stood for humility and modesty but also conveyed a secret message of faithfulness for those familiar with the messages conveyed by flowers. Pansies meant thoughts, and told the recipient that the sender was thinking of them.
A silk embroidered postcard with poppies and the crest of the Australian Commonwealth Military Forces by Alexander (Alick) Charles Anderson and sent to his future wife Ruby Jennings during World War I. SLSA: D 8691/4(L)
A silk embroidered postcard with violets and 'To my sweetheart' from Alexander (Alick) Charles Anderson to his future wife Ruby Jennings during World War I. SLSA: D 8691/40(L)
An embroidered postcard sent by Alfred Duncan, a soldier fighting in France, to his mother in Adelaide, dated 19 June 1916. SLSA: PRG 544/8
A silk embroidered postcard with flowers and 'Merry Christmas' sewn, from Alexander (Alick) Charles Anderson to his future wife Ruby Jennings during World War I. SLSA: D 8691/54(L)
The State Library holds many examples of photographs, postcards, letters and diaries of those who served in war zones, especially World War One. They tell us that for every man and woman who fell or was damaged in ways few of us can understand, there were those left behind who cared and grieved. These were also damaged, some irretrievably, by their grief and loss.
As guns and bombs and missiles once again threaten lives across the globe, it seems more important than ever, to remember the real cost of war.
Written by Isabel Story, Engagement Librarian