2011 $5 Remembrance Day PNC

Each year, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, one minute’s silence is observed to honour those killed and wounded during war. The key symbol of Remembrance Day is the Flanders poppy, which gained resonance for being among the first plants to bloom on the battlefields of northern France and Belgium during the Great War. For soldiers, the red petals represented the blood of fellow soldiers spilt so far from home. The symbol was popularised through surgeon Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s (1872-1918) poem “In Flanders Fields”.