Veterans Day or Remembrance Day

Let’s saddle up today, I’ve got an adventure to share with you! If you have followed the My Western Heart blog, you are probably realizing by now that I LOVE travel, I was recently blessed to return to beautiful Newmarket Suffolk, England, known as the racehorse capital of the world and home of Tattersalls, the main auctioneer of racehorses in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

I think one of the things I love most about travel is it opens our eyes to how others live, I think that’s the part I love the most. I want to share a little bit about what I learned about Remembrance Day in the UK.

Every where we went, we were greeted by these sweet little red poppies

First of all, the UK acknowledges Remembrance Day in ways we don’t in the states, for example everywhere you go you will see these little boxes of red poppies, you simply make a donation and take a little red poppy and place it on your lapel. The money raised goes to help support veterans in the UK. It seems everyone has a red poppy. At first, I had no idea what these little red flowers were as we walked around the streets of London, but we soon found out.

During our journey to Newmarket, Suffolk, we visited an old church on the outskirts of Cambridge and saw these clear plastic people scattered about the church pews. We had no idea what they were for, we guessed maybe they were holders for church members. They really captured our attention and interest.

As we traveled on to Newmarket, Suffolk,  we would soon learn the meaning of these plastic silhouettes while visiting the new National Horseracing Museum at Palace House. 

I will share more about the museum in a later post.

As we walked in, we were greeted by more of these clear plastic people. This time the clear plastic man donned one of those little red poppies on his invisible lapel. What are these plastic people for we wondered?

As I turned around on the wall was my answer…

England certainly has the right idea, commemorate, educate and heal and I love how England has commemorated their veterans lost at war with these clear plastic silhouettes 

Thanks for riding along today, if you are a Veteran a heartfelt thank you for your service and if you have lost a veteran to war, our gratitude for your sacrifice.

If you have a red poppy wear it proudly, I sure have been! Please feel free to leave a comment to thank a Veteran today.

I leave you with this poem.

Until next time, happy, healthy trails!

This blog post was originally posted in 2018