Booters I am glad you exercised your freedom to both wear a poppy and to voice your opinion on the matter here. I am also glad that those who don't have the freedom not to. I respect that and believe that was a small part of the freedoms many people have struggled to gain and or protect both in the past and today.
I would also like to share this photo of my wife's Uncle who died as a Flight Sergent in the RCAF in April 1944 when the Lancaster Bomber he was serving in crashed landed in England after being damaged in combat over Germany.
There is a lake in Northern Saskatchewan named in his honor.
I'd also to point out that more non combatants died in WW2 due directly or indirectly of the war than combatants of all nations. Only recently have they been officially remembered as part of our observances on November 11th.
I will also mention my parents who when in their teens living in Central and Eastern Europe directly experienced the force of the war and saw many people, young old die, be injured or brutally assaulted. It wasn't until far later in my life I recognized both my parents lived with PTSD as a result for their entire lives. My mother, who worked as a nurse's aid in the what was then Czechoslovakia, saw and treated women and children who were brought into an aide station for treatment after suffering brutal sexual assault of soldiers of the liberating Red Army. She walked among columns of refugees in snow laden roads and told me decades later that it is always the very young and old who die first. She had horrible nightmares for 30 or more years after. It was hard not to notice.
I will wear a poppy but I will put it on when I am ready. I will observe 2 minutes of silence on the 11th and remember all the heroes and victims of WW2 and of many other war before, after, currently and in years to come.