A poppy picked from Flanders Fields during the First World War and sent to a US soldier’s fiancée has been unearthed more than a century later.
Harold Alfred Stivers pressed the delicate flower into a silk postcard and posted it to his future wife Marie on June 18, 1918 – just months before the end of the war.
The Infantryman, from New Jersey, picked the poppy where he had been fighting on the Western Front.
More than a century later, the poppy remains intact along with a collection of Harold’s wartime souvenirs.
As well as the poppy, the archive includes German gas mask lenses, dog tags, and a piece of French army insignia taken from a coat found on a corpse in Meuse-Argonne.
The poppy was adopted as the official symbol of Remembrance by the Royal British Legion in 1921.
It was chosen because the bright red flowers flourished in the Western Front battlefields, famously inspired by Lt. Col. John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Fields.
Harold’s wartime collection is set to fetch between £500 and £700 when it goes under the hammer at Hansons Auctioneers next week.
Hansons’ militaria expert Matt Crowson said: “Nothing is more evocative of the brutal and bloody fighting of World War One Trenches as a poppy.
“To think this flower grew in the soil of that infamous battlefield is nothing short of miraculous.
“This is a very personal collection and with it we can piece together Harold’s savage reality of war thousands of miles from home and how he kept thoughts of his fiancée alive.
“He was operating in or near Flanders, one of the bleakest landscapes of the war – flat, waterlogged, and churned into mud by years of shellfire.
“And yet also the landscape which produced this everlasting symbol of Remembrance.”
The poppy and Harold’s collection had been owned by a military specialist from Vermont.
The seller, who did not want to be named, said: “I believe the collection likely passed out of the family’s hands at some point.
“I hope it goes to a European museum or collection that will highlight the (currently fragile) camaraderie between the US and France during, and after, the war.”
Harold trained as a bookkeeper before he was drafted into the army, setting sail for France on May 19, 1918, aged 29.
Records confirm he joined Company A of the 311th Infantry, part of the 78th Division, as a cook infantryman.
Known as the ‘Lightning Division’, its soldiers experienced intense fighting in France, including the St.Mihel and Meuse-Argonne offensives, pushing back German forces.
Matt added: “While Harold joined the war relatively late, his experience would have been horrific.
“In major offensives, burial details could not always keep up.
“Soldiers advancing through the battlefield sometimes encountered bodies – French, German, or American– lying where they had fallen.
“This was one of the most psychologically difficult parts of the war. “Many soldiers wrote that the sight of the dead affected them more than gunfire.”
After the Armistice in November 1918 Harold and his unit were billeted in the small French town called Flavigny.
The seller aded: “Some of the letters and correspondence point towards a close relationship with the residents in the town.
“I suspect he [Harold] sent home the pressed poppy to his fiancée, Marie Madeline Fries who he later married in 1920.”
The loose-leaf album also contains warm letters from the French family with whom Harold was billeted, a photograph of Harold in military uniform, along with an autopen-signed letter from George V at Windsor Castle, welcoming US soldiers enroute to the front in France.
Also included are other items related to Harold’s service, including his service papers, train tickets, aerial photographs of trench systems, an Army Corps Districts 1918 printed map and a small silk 48-star United States bunting style flag.
Published records also state that Harold received a World War Two draft registration card in 1942 at the age of 53.
Sadly no further records of any service can be found.
Harold died in March 1959 at Loch Arbour, Monmouth County, New Jersey at the age of 69.
The archive, including maps, postcards and aerial trench photos, will be sold at Hansons Derby saleroom next Wednesday (25/2).
