A personal PhotoChallenge matching a story to a photo every day for 30 days with short tales of travel, mountaineering, Nepal, art, and a few personal ones too!

11. Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

Dr C and I were privileged to spend a day in London in November 2014 and to see the majestic tribute to British and Commonwealth servicemen killed in WWI. The queues were staggeringly long, yet everywhere was so silent as people shuffled forward to pass this blood red display.

“Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was a public art installation created in the moat of the Tower of London, England, between July and November 2014, commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. It consisted of 888,246 ceramic red poppies, each intended to represent one British or Colonial serviceman killed in the War. The ceramic artist was Paul Cummins, with conceptual design by stage designer Tom Piper.The work’s title was taken from the first line of a poem by an unknown World War I soldier.”

It is incredible however to think that even in this centenary year marking the end of WWI that there have been acts of vandalism of memorial gardens in Edinburgh, a female student official actually calling for the destruction of a memorial to fallen students at Bristol University because it represented white supremacy, attacks on poppy sellers in London, and most despicably the British government refusing to allow the Rhodesian Veterans Association to participate in the Cenotaph ceremony! These are also acts we should NEVER forget and only serve to highlight the nasty, evil and cowardly elements running through the whole of our rotten society.

Categories: Photography

Tags: 30 day blogging, 30 day challenge, ceramic poppies, memories, mountain tales, Paul Cummins, personal challenge, personal life, photochallenge, Photography, photostories, poppies, Remembrance, Tower of London, travel tales, WWI