Remembrance Day on Sunday Stamps

On the 100th Anniversary of the end of WWI it seems appropriate to commemorate the event with one of the series of Royal Mail stamps issued each year since 2014.

These are from the 2016 issue - 

Battlefield Poppy 

Giles Revell's photograph captures a single flower.

To My Brother

The English nurse, writer, feminist and pacifist wrote this poem when she lost her brother in the war.

Munitions Worker, Charlotte 'Lottie' Meade

One of the many women packing shells during the war, Lottie died of TNT poisoning in 1916.

Travoys Arriving with Wounded
Smol, Macedonia

The painter Stanley Spencer served in the RAMC in Macedonia before later joining the infantry and fighting there.

Tiepal Memorial, Somme

The memorial commemorates more than 72000 British and South African troops killed on the Somme before March 2018 and who have no known grave; most of those died in the Somme offensive of 1916.

The longest battle at sea and the only encounter between the British and German fleets took place at Jutland from 31 May -1 June 2016.

Captain's A C Green's Battle of Jutland Commemorative Medal

(If you look closely you will see that the letter 'M' is related to these stamps with memories of the war. For other 'M related stamps check out Sunday-stamps-m.)

Thiepval Wood - Sunday Stamps II

Gardens and Forests proved a difficult theme for me. Kew Gardens I had shown before -

I struggled to find a forest, but then remembered Thiepval Wood and the poem by Edmund Blundell describing the devastating effect war can have on man and nature.

"The tired air groans as the heavies swing over, the river-hollows boom;

The shell-fountains leap from the swamps, and with wildfire and fume

The shoulder of the chalkdown convulses.

Then the jabbering echoes stampede in the slatting wood,

Ember-black the gibbet trees like bones or thorns protrude

From the poisonous smoke past all impulses.

To them these silvery dews can never again be dear,

Nor the blue javelin-flame of the thunderous noons strike fear."

September 1916

Great Britain 2016

This stamp was part of the part of a five year commemorative programme marking the centenary of the outbreak of The Great War (WWI). Each year of the great war is to be explores through a stamp which covers six key themes: Poppies, War Art, Memorials and Artefacts.

It seems to fit our garden (of remembrance) and our forest theme at Sunday-Stamps-II-130.