Red poppy, white poppy

I bought a red poppy this year for the first time in several years; I also bought a white poppy, representing pacificism, to go along with it. I wouldn't feel comfortable wearing either now without the other; recent wars have changed my opinion on the subject of goint to war, or at least helping police the world, or at least doing so for other countries' internal affairs.

Today was AJEX Shabbos so there were real veterans in shul, wearing medals alongside their poppies. I don't know what they would have made of my white poppy. Needless to say, my sympathies lean away from the white for the war the older of them would have fought in (WW2); for the war the poppy was first worn to commemorate, it was the other way around.

I'd actually forgotten the red poppies no longer say "Haig Fund", named after the man who sent the youth of Britain into the trenches to be cannon fodder. Between this and the preponderance of WW1 vets at Remembrance Sunday ceremonies when I was little, it took me a while when I was young to realise that the poppy appeal wasn't just about WW1 vets...