Behind every good story, there is another story. And in this case it's the inspired story behind the romantic story of the poppy, the red poppy, the papaver rhoeas, which symbolises remembrance.

And of course we now associate the poppy with John McRae's rondeau ‘In Flanders Fields'.

Photo: Tracy Hardy.

'In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row….”

It's a powerful, enduring commemoration of the Great War which we respectfully dust off every Anzac day.

'That mark our place; and in the sky, the larks, still bravely singing, fly, scarce heard amid the guns below”.

During the First World War the beautiful countryside of Western Europe had been bashed, bombed and blasted into a desolate sea of mud where good men should not go – and nothing would grow. Nothing except the bright red Flanders poppies – pretty but resilient, delicate but doughty, the poppy thrived.

One Sunday in May 1915 during the early days of the Second Battle of Ypres a young Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed by a German shell.

Because the chaplain was absent on duty, Helmer's good friend and brigade doctor Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae deputised at the burial service.

The story has it that later the same evening, John who had been inspired by the sight of the new spring poppies of Ypres, penned a draft of the now famous ‘In Flanders Fields'.

But how did this bring about the remembrance poppy?

John's poem so inspired American academic Moina Belle Michael she handmade 24 red silk poppies.

She wore one, sold the others and the poppy appeal was born.

French woman Anna Guerin took some of the poppies to England and in 1921 The Royal British Legion ordered 9-million which sold out immediately. The poppy appeal boomed.

McRae and the poppies of Ypres also prompted Moina Michael into verse.

'Oh You who sleep, in Flanders' fields, sleep sweet to rise anew, we caught the torch you threw”.

Michael became known as ‘The Poppy Lady' for her humanitarian work in teaching disabled servicemen. And she vowed to always wear a poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

'We cherish too, the poppy red, that grows on fields where valour led. It seems to signal to the skies,

that blood of heroes never dies. But lends a luster to the red. Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders' fields. And now the torch and poppy red, wear in the honour of the dead.

Fear not that ye have died for nought: We've learned the lesson that ye taught.”

So a war, one of history's darkest times, encapsulated in two poems and defined by a simple handmade floral tribute that remain as recognisable and respected as they did 100 years ago.