Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

Today we went to the Tower of London. Along with every other person in London... or at least so it seemed! Holy mackeral... look at those crowds!!

The Tower isn't normally so popular... Mama says there is a beary special exhibition that started back in July.

Oh... what is that?? What are those red things?

There are soldiers down there carrying boxes and... are those red flowers?

Wow! Like wow... the moat of the Tower (which has no water) has been progressively filled with ceramic poppies since July. One poppy for each of the 880,000 plus Commonwealth soldiers who died in the First World War. Everybody in London wants to come and see the display. It is seriously impressive.

There are two places where the poppies cascade out of the Tower. Some say it looks like the Tower is bleeding.

Wow.

The display is called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.

The poppies were designed by an artist and you can actually buy one and they will ship it to you once the display is over. (They are all sold out now apparently).

A maple leave on some poppies...

Every day, cadets, volunteers and soldiers add to the display, a few hundred poppies at a time.

And if you wait long enough... at 4:55 p.m. there is the Roll of Honour. Every evening (since July) they have been reading the names of some of the Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in WWI.

The evening we went, it looked like the Archbishop of Canterbury or maybe the Bishop of the Armed Forces. He read out about 200 names.

It took about 20 minutes and was beary solemn. Soldiers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Then a Guardsman played the Last Post.